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THE DAME SCHOOL 
OF EXPERIENCE 

AND OTHER PAPERS 



BY 

SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS 

Author of "The Gentle Reader" "The Pardoner's Wallet," 

"The Pleasures of an Absentee Landlord" etc. 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
1920 






COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY SAMUEL M. CROTHERS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



1-0 o 



g)CU60l712 



NOV 26 S320 



CONTENTS 

An Interview with an Educator i 

The Teacher's Dilemma 25 

Every Man's Natural Desire to be Some- 
body Else 51 

The Perils of the Literate 71 

Natural Enemies and How to Make the 

Best of Them ioi 

The Spiritual Adviser of Efficiency Ex- 
perts 135 

The Pilgrims and their Contemporaries 160 

Education in Pursuit of Henry Adams 186 

The Hibernation of Genius 214 

The Unpreparedness of Liberalism 232 

On the Evening of the New Day 258 



THE DAME SCHOOL 
, OF EXPERIENCE 

• 

AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

In my journey through the world, I chanced one 
day on the School of Experience. I had heard of 
this institution, but it had never been my good 
fortune to visit it. The schoolhouse was an an- 
cient building, and the withered dame who had 
presided there for many millenniums stood at 
the door. She was watching the departure of 
some of her brighter pupils who had learned the 
day's lesson, which had been an unusually hard 
one even for the School of Experience. 

"May I come in, dame?" I asked. 

"Do you come to learn?" 

"I come to learn about your school. I have 
heard it highly spoken of. I am much interested 
in educational methods." 

"Is that all? I thought you might be inter- 
ested in education. But that is too much to 

1 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

expect. Nowadays everybody is interested in 
methods." 

Here she laughed, as if she were recalling some 
bitter prehistoric joke. 

I found the equipment of the school-room very 
primitive. The rude benches were fantastically 
carved by generations of pupils who had made 
their mark in the world. I noticed the name of 
Genghis Khan, and Pompey the Great, and 
Attila, and Jesse James, and other celebrities. 
There were also the initials of statesmen and 
saints who had here obtained the rudiments of 
education. The ancient blackboard was covered 
with moral maxims, all of the simplest character. 
It was evident that the dame did n't go in for 
the fancy branches of ethics. Behind the teach- 
er's desk was a large assortment of rods. 

"I see you believe in corporal punishment." 

"I did n't say I believed in it, did I? I don't 
use those rods. I only keep them handy. 'There 
they are,' I say to my pupils. 'Do as you like 
with them.' Then they beat each other with 
them until they learn better." 

"Doesn't it injure the pupils?" I asked. 

"Of course it does. I should think that even 
2 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

you would know that. But if after a while they 
learn that it does injure them, is n't that some- 
thing worth knowing? That's what I call get- 
ting results. As to methods, I have n't any to 
speak of. I let them do as they please, as long as 
they please; and when it doesn't please them 
any longer, I wait for them to ask why? Then 
I don't tell them. After they have asked a long 
time, it begins to dawn on them that they never 
will get an answer till they use their minds. Some 
of them do. They are the ones I can educate." 
"It must be a long and expensive process." 
"I never claimed that my school was cheap." 
I realized that the dame had a peppery tem- 
per and the interview must be carried on with 
discretion. 

"I understand that you have been educating 
the human race for a long time." 
"Do I look it?" 

"No, you look remarkably fresh." 
"Don't tell lies. You get found out. That's 
the first lesson in my school. It's a long time 
since I first set up my school in a cave, and tried 
to educate a lot of lively young troglodytes who 
did n't want to be educated." 

3 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

"That must have been an interesting experi- 
ment. What kind of a mind did the troglodyte 
have?" 

"About the same kind of a mind that you 
have. The moment I set eyes on you I was 
struck by the family resemblance." 

I must have betrayed a momentary embar- 
rassment, for she continued in a conciliatory 
tone, "No offense intended. The troglodyte had 
very much the same sort of a mind you have, 
though you doubtless use what mind you have 
better than he did, for you have the advantage of 
the lessons your ancestors learned in my school. 
They made a good many mistakes for you. You 
don't need to make them over again unless you 
want to. When I saw you looking at the door, 
as if to say, 'I wonder what that old lady is do- 
ing there,' I thought of the first homo sapiens 
I tried to teach. I said, 'He's a chip of the old 
block. He does n't know much, but he has curi- 
osity. He will ask questions.' 

"I knew that when I induced the first homo 
sapiens to ask questions I'd got him. I said, 
'If I can keep him asking Why? and How? and 
Whence? and Whither? I can draw him out.' " 

4 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

"Don't you ever in your school tell the an- 
swers to the questions ? " 

"What would be the use? They don't pay at- 
tention to what I say. If I tell them a bit of wis- 
dom before they find it out for themselves, they 
think it is a joke. When they find it out for them- 
selves, they take it seriously." 

"Oh! I understand your method. You have 
really modern ideas after all. You believe in 
learning by doing." 

"Not exactly. At least, not by doing what 
they are told to do. My pupils are always doing 
something or other — and it's generally wrong. 
They have more activity than good sense. The 
world is full of creatures that are doing things 
without asking why. You can't educate a grass- 
hopper. He's too busy hopping. The peculiar- 
ity of man is that sometimes you can induce 
him to stop and think." 

"I presume, dame, that you use object-lessons 
in your teaching." 

"No, I don't use them. The pupils use them. 
There they are, good, bad, and indifferent. A 
pupil sees an object and likes the looks of it. He 
calls out, 'Teacher, may I have that? I want 

5 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

it.' 'Very well,' I say, 'take it or leave it! 
But if you leave it you can't take it, and if you 
take it you must take the consequences that go 
with it.' 

"'But,' he says, 'I don't see any conse- 
quences!' 'You '11 see them soon enough if you 
take it. Pretty soon there won't be anything 
but consequences.' 

"They never pay any attention to moral re- 
marks like that, and they seize the thing they 
want, regardless of the consequences. But the 
consequences stick to them like burrs. After a 
time they see that the two things always go to- 
gether. That's a big lesson." 

"A good many people," I said, "never learn 
it." 

"Quite so: every school has its failures." 

"What do you consider the most important 
branch of learning in your curriculum?" 

"Gumption." 

"Is that a required study? They did n't 
teach it in my school." 

"I presume not. Some don't." She pointed 
to a group of pupils who were bending over their 
tasks. "That," she said, "is the beginners' class 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

in common gumption. They have failed in the 
first lesson, and I'm keeping them after school." 

"But they look unusually intellectual." 

"Very." she said; "they look that way, and 
they feel that way. They are good on all the ad- 
vanced lessons, but they have n't got gumption." 

Just then one of the pupils jumped up, 
snapped his fingers to attract attention, and 
cried, "Teacher! I got it! May I go home?" 

"What's gumption?" 

"It's what we have n't got enough of yet to 
know what's the matter with us." 

"Good," she said, "you are coming on. You 
have learned enough for one day. You may go 
now. To-morrow we will have another lesson." 

She turned to me triumphantly. 

"You see he's learning something. It's the 
first time he has got the idea that there is some- 
thing the matter with him. He does n't know 
what it is, but he's on the right track." 

"I should like to know, dame, what are your 
ideas on educational values?" 

"The chief educational value," she said, "is 
something to eat. When you don't know where 
you are going to get it, it stimulates the ques- 

7 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

tions, Why? Where? How? When? How are 
you to get your breakfast? This is a question 
you can't put off till to-morrow. It quickens 
your wits. Examination comes every day. If 
you fail to get your breakfast, you know it. 
This tends to thoroughness." 

"But that seems to me to be a materialistic 
basis for education. A person may get plenty to 
eat and yet not be what you would call an edu- 
cated man — at least, not liberally educated." 

"I did n't say he was. Getting enough to eat 
is only the first lesson. Getting it honestly takes 
you pretty far on in ethics. It introduces a good 
many hows. Many of these problems are not 
yet solved in my school. To begin with, the 
table-manners of my pupils were awful. In my 
first cave the answers to the food-questions were 
very crude. 

"When a healthy young troglodyte was hun- 
gry, he snatched his food from somebody who 
was weaker. This was very convenient for the 
snatcher, and the snatchee did n't count. But 
the time came when the snatcher came with a 
good healthy appetite and there was no one to 
^snatch from. 

8 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

"After a while it dawned upon the brighter 
snatchers that, if they were to make their busi- 
ness profitable, they must leave the snatchee 
enough to keep him alive. This was the first 
lesson in political economy. Then, after a while, 
a revolutionary doctrine was broached which 
you see on the blackboard: 'Thou shalt not 
steal.' The idealists who accepted this theory 
were confronted with the question, 'If you are 
not allowed to live by stealing, how can you 
live?' That's a puzzler." 

"I'm surprised, dame, that you have n't got 
beyond the Eighth Commandment." 

"Have you ? Maybe you are among those who 
think they have solved the problem when they 
let other people do their stealing. Here are 
some exercises of my pupils in the seventeenth 
century. They were printed in the 'West- 
minster Larger Catechism.' Ever hear of it?" 

"I learned the 'Shorter Catechism' as far 
as 'What is Effectual Calling?'" 

"This is the 'Larger Catechism.' It is more 
thorough." 

| She opened her desk and brought out an old 
volume and read, — 

9 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

"'What is the Eighth Commandment?' 

"'The Eighth Commandment is, Thou shalt 
not steal.' 

"'What are the duties required in the Eighth 
Commandment ? ' 

'"The duties required in the Eighth Com- 
mandment are truth, faithfulness, and justice 
in contracts and commerce between man and 
man; rendering to every man his due; restitu- 
tion of goods unlawfully detained from the right 
owners thereof; giving and lending freely accord- 
ing to our abilities and the necessities of others; 
moderation of our judgments, wills, and appe- 
tites concerning worldly goods; a prudent care 
and study to get, keep, use, and dispose of 
those things that are necessary for the susten- 
tation of our nature and suitable to our condi- 
tion; a lawful calling and diligence in it; frugal- 
ity, and an endeavor by all just and lawful 
means to procure and preserve and further the 
wealth and outward estate of all others as well 
as ourselves.' 

"That's a pretty big contract, is n't it? You 
have to do all that just.to prevent stealing. It's 
a lesson in preventive honesty. It's a big, co- 

10 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

operative undertaking. You are not really hon- 
est unless you 'endeavor by all just and lawful 
means to procure and preserve and further the 
wealth and outward estate of all others as well 
as ourselves.'" 

"I'm afraid we haven't got very far yet," 
I said. 

"Good for you," said the dame. "We'll have 
an honest world yet when ordinary men like you 
see how much has to be done." 

"What kind of ability do you value most in 
your .school ? " . 

"Adaptability. I have pupils who have a 
great deal of, ability, but they stand around 
helplessly waiting for some one to tell them how 
to use it. They look for a job that can fit them. 
It never occurs to them that they are being 
measured by the job, and must submit to a 
few necessary alterations before they can be 
accepted." 

"You are educating the aggregate mind," I 
said. "What difference do you find between it 
and the individual mind — mine for example?" 

"There's more of it," she said, "but it works 
in much the same way. The hard thing is to fix 

11 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

its attention on anything long enough to have 
something happen. The chief necessity is drill. 
It's line upon line, precept upon precept. I have 
to drill perpetually on the fundamentals. I have 
to teach the parts of speech over and over again. 
I don't care much for nouns, but I'm great on 
verbs — active verbs in the present tense. 

"I put most of my time on two big verbs — 
the verb 'to hurt' and the verb 'to help.' I call 
these two my civilizers. 

"I began with 'to hurt.' This is the first 
thing that makes my pupils sit up and take 
notice. At first they take it only in a vaguely 
impersonal way. They say, 'It hurts.' They 
don't stop to ask what 'it' is. That lesson has 
n't a great deal of educational value. But when 
they begin to ask why, we get results. When one 
is hurt and asks why, the answer is quite per- 
sonal. He sees the other fellow and lays all the 
blame on him. 'He hurt me.' Then without 
need of prompting he goes on with, 'I hurt 
him.' This makes a lively lesson. These retali- 
atory exercises make a large part of human 
history. 

"It takes some time before I can get them to 
12 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

take up the plural in the passive. But at last 
they come to see the consequences of their 
efforts — and say, l We are hurt.' They sud- 
denly realize that they are partners in suffer- 
ing. When they realize that, they have learned 
a mighty good lesson. They have to share the 
consequences." 

"That," I said, "is what the Greeks had in 
mind when they gave us the word sympathy — 
feeling together." 

"Yes, the Greeks found out a great deal. You 
see they did n't have to spend so much time 
learning ancient languages. So they learned 
from experience. The first thing people feel to- 
gether is pain. It takes longer to feel joy to- 
gether. They are more selfish about that and 
try to keep it to themselves. 

"When the pupils have mastered the verb 'to 
hurt,' I put them on the verb 'to help.' That's 
hard too. 

" The first lesson is the one each one likes best. 
'I — help — myself.' The verb is in the reflex- 
ive form and reflects pleasantly on the actor. 
'When I help myself, I feel that I am doing good 
to a person who deserves it.' This puts the 

13 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

scholar in a good humor, and he 's ready for the 
next lesson. 'I — help — him. 5 In the first 
class in philanthropy, the pupil insists on being 
very pernickety about the object. The pupil 
says, 'I'll help him, if I know who he is, and if 
I 'm sure he is worthy of my help, and if he will 
be grateful.' This condescending attitude of 
the benefactor enrages the beneficiary, who does 
n't want to be helped that way, and looks upon 
it as but a variation of the exercises in the verb 
'to hurt.' Sometimes these philanthropic les- 
sons go on for centuries, till I find that both sides 
are repeating the verb 'to hate.' " 

"It's too bad," I said, "that the beneficiaries 
are so ungrateful. When most people are so self- 
ish, it's good to find those who are ready to take 
up other people's burdens without so much as 
saying, 'By your leave.' I'm thrilled by the 
white man's burden." 

"Yes, I noticed that you were a white man. 
But if you were a black man, or a yellowish 
man, or a flight-brownish man you would n't 
feel that way?" 

"No, then I suppose I should make trouble." 

"Of course you would. A person who tried to 
14 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

help you by hurting your self-respect would hurt 
you more than he helped you. You would know 
that you were hurt, and he would n't." 

"It's only after a great deal of misunderstood 
suffering that a higher lesson is learned and the 
verb is taken up in the plural: 'We — help — 
another.' Here there is no permanent distinc- 
tion between the benefactors and beneficiaries. 
It is a simple matter of give and take. When 
human beings get this far, they are beginning to 
be civilized. 

"But after the verb, the most important part 
of speech is the adverb. An adverb qualifies a 
verb, adjective, or other adverb. A great num- 
ber of practical failures are adverbial. An un- 
lucky adverb can queer the best verb in the 
dictionary. It's a regular hoodoo. I say to 
my scholars, 'Mind your adverbs.' 

"It is not enough to do the right thing — you 
must do it rightly. It is not enough to do a gen- 
erous thing — you must do it generously. To 
do a right thing wrongly is as bad as to do a 
wrong thing rightly. It mixes up the results. 

"You can say anything you please if you say 
it pleasantly. There are people who can't say 

15 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

1 How do you do?' without having it sound like 
an insult. They say it so inquisitorially. 

"They tell me that there are clubs where, in 
order to keep the peace, the members are not 
allowed to talk about the two most interesting 
subjects in the world — politics and religion. 
Now this is not because either of these subjects 
is in its nature quarrelsome — it's the people 
who discuss these things quarrelsomely. Noth- 
ing is more delightful and illuminating than to 
talk politics with one who disagrees with you. 
What you object to is to have him disagree with 
you disagreeably. To talk religion sanctimoni- 
ously is intolerable, but the most worldly- 
minded man will enjoy the conversation of one 
who without pretense talks religiously." 

"I've noticed that recently," I said. "Dur- 
ing the war we have been drilling ourselves in a 
set of necessary adverbs. In order to meet the 
crisis, we had to eat sparingly, and dress eco- 
nomically, and speak guardedly, and endure 
stoically, and obey conscientiously, and look at 
our neighbor suspiciously. 

"Then suddenly victory came on such a 
stupendous scale that our imagination could not 

16 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

conceive what had taken place. Somebody with 
a loud voice ought to go through the car of war 
calling out, 'End of this route. Change ad- 
verbs ! ' 

"I like the song of Miriam at the Red Sea. 
Then 'Miriam the prophetess . . . took a tim- 
brel in her hand; and all the women went out 
after her with timbrels and with dances. And 
Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for 
he hath triumphed gloriously. The horse and 
his rider hath he thrown into the sea.' That has 
the right sound. Don't triumph economically or 
conscientiously — triumph gloriously." 

"I remember the circumstance well," said the 
dame. "But Miriam's conduct caused adverse 
criticism among some of the more sober-minded 
Israelites. They wondered where she got so 
many timbrels. Instead of giving them a song, 
she would have shown more seriousness if she 
had given them another talk on the plagues they 
had been through in Egypt. 

"This negligence about the adverb causes 
many excellent people to draw the false lesson 
from their failures. They think that what they 
did was wrong, and get discouraged. What their 

17 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

failure really taught was that the thing could n't 
be done that way, and they should try again. 

"There was Aristides, who was called 'the 
Just' till it got on the nerves of the Athenians. 
He could n't understand it. Now the trouble 
was n't that he was too just, but that he did 
justice too monotonously. 

"I used to say, 'Aristides, I don't mean to 
suggest, but can't you let your justice break out 
in a new spot? You have been doing justice to 
the free-born citizens till they can't stand it any 
more. Their consciences have reached the satu- 
ration point. Why don't you practice justice on 
a new set who are not used to it ? Why not try it 
on the slaves ? It would be a real treat to them. 
The Athenians would n't know what to make 
of it and would quit calling you the Just.' 

"'What would they call me then?' 

'"I'm sure I don't know, but it would be in- 
teresting for you to find out.' " 

"What you say about adverbs reminds me of 
a saying of Lord Bacon's. He said something to 
the effect that when people who had tried to do 
a desirable thing and failed told him that their 
experiment proved that it could n't be done, 

18 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

it only proved that it could n't be done that 
way." 

"Yes, Francis was one of my star pupils. 
He used to say that my school was the only one 
in which he learned anything. I suppose I fa- 
vored him, for they used to call him Teacher's 
Pet. He was always doing things with his mind. 
When anything occurred that was suspiciously 
intellectual, they always laid it on Francis. 

"Excuse me, sir, I must listen to the spelling- 
class in words of one syllable." She rapped for 
attention and said, "Spell war." 

There was a long roar, increasing as one after 
another took up the sound, and it kept up as if it 
would never end. 

" Say it ! and then stop it. This is not a long- 
drawn-out, polysyllabic word like 'hypochon- 
driachal.' It's a word of one syllable. Say it 
sharply and decisively. Don't keep on snarling 
and growling as if you were worrying the dic- 
tionary. Stop rolling your r's. I don't object to 
those who don't know when they are beaten, but 
not to know when you are victorious sounds 
weak-minded. When you've got all you fought 
for, why do you want to keep on fighting? It's 

19 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

a bad habit your ancestors got into, snarling 
over bones in the cave. When they got into 
a fight, they never knew when it was ended. 
When you have to say war, say it sharply and 
decisively — and cut it short." 

"Teacher! We can't help it. We've got go- 
ing!" 

"Very well, then! Get going on something 
else. Spell peace!" 

There was a soft purring murmur, ending in 
an apologetic whisper. 

"That's worse than the other. Don't say 
peace timidly, or petulantly, or apprehensively. 
That's what makes people throw things at you. 
Say it manfully, and boldly, and as if you ex- 
pected something to happen. And if you can 
say it intelligently — why all the better." 

I thought it was time to change the subject. 
"Dame! What class of pupils gives you the 
most trouble?" 

" Some of the advanced thinkers are about as 
troublesome as any. Their minds get going so 
fast on some slippery subjects that they skid. 
Before they know it they are advancing back- 
ward. They have a delightful sensation of going 

20 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

as they please till they collide with some fact 
they did n't know was there. 

"When a new idea gets control of an unfur- 
nished mind, it has the time of its life. There is 
nothing inside to molest it or make it afraid. 
I have pupils who are bubbling over with mod- 
ernness. They are effervescing with contempo- 
raneousness. But they are continually repeat- 
ing the blunders of their great-great-grand- 
fathers. They call old sins by new names, and 
they pride themselves on their up-to-date prim- 
itiveness. They have learned a few things that 
other people don't know; and they have never 
found out some things that the race found out 
long ago. They are pleased to think that they are 
original. So they are — aboriginal. These arti- 
ficial aborigines are harder to civilize than the 
natural aborigines, because they think that civili- 
zation is a stage that they have gone through." 

"They have been through it, have n't they? 
They were civilized to begin with." 

"Their parents were — more or less." 

"Still, it's a good thing to go back to first 
principles." 

"Of course it is. But they don't go back to 
21 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

first principles. Principles aren't in their line. 
All they care for is sensations. They go back to 
a state of mind where there are n't any principles 
to speak of. When they come to a 'Thou shalt 
not/ they go and do it. They call every pro- 
hibition a taboo. They think their first duty is 
to break every taboo they come across. It gives 
them a creepy feeling of not doing their duty. 
They like to feel that way." 

"But there are a great many taboos that 
ought to be broken," I said. 

"Of course there are. But there's a difference 
between a taboo and something which people 
have found out in the hard school of experience. 
What's an education good for if it does n't en- 
able people to make just such distinctions as 
that? A crow sees an object in the field that 
may turn out to be only a harmless scarecrow. 
But if he is a sensible crow, he will make an in- 
vestigation before committing himself. He has 
seen too many men who look like scarecrows to 
take chances." 

I saw that the old dame's nerves were on edge, 
and I thought it was time to draw the interview 
to a close. 

22 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

"I have greatly enjoyed my visit," I said. 
"Your school seems to be thorough. There is 
just one criticism I might make, and that is 
about the length of time it takes to learn any- 
thing in particular. The curriculum seems 
adapted to persons whose longevity is abnormal. 
There was Methuselah, for example. By the 
time he was five or six hundred years old he 
must have accumulated a good deal of valuable 
experience. He had still several centuries in 
which to apply the lessons he had learned. But 
in a beggarly four-score years you can't get on 
far. The world is getting frightfully compli- 
cated, and it's going faster all the time. There 
should be some way of expediting the educa- 
tional process. We are confused: when a new 
idea gets into our heads, it drives out those that 
were already there." 

"Your heads are n't very roomy; that's a 
fact. But what can I do about it? I suppose you 
want me to put up a sign — 'Painless Educator, 
Prejudices Removed Without Your Knowing 
It.' Perhaps you want me to start a corre- 
spondence school, and advertise: 'The lessons 
of Experience furnished without the Experi- 

23 



AN INTERVIEW WITH AN EDUCATOR 

ence.' You want some kind of a get-wise-quick 
scheme." 

"Why not?" I said. "If you can't get wise 
quickly, what's the use of getting wise at all?" 

"Now you've asked a worth-while question. 
Why not? Hold on to that question. If you in- 
tend to get wise, you must lose no time. What 
did I tell you about the parts of speech? Expe- 
rience is n't a noun. You can't accumulate ex- 
periences as if they were thrift stamps to be 
pasted in a book. Why not treat me as a verb? 
If you get the right adverb, you will find that 
I'm not so slow as you think. You can experi- 
ence a good deal if you use your mind. But you 
must make up your mind to step lively if you 
are to experience anything much. But this is 
my busy day. Good afternoon, sir. Mind your 
adverbs!" 

As I walked down the ancient path, I heard 
her repeating, "I experience, thou experiencest, 
he experiences. We experience, you experience, 
they experience. I wonder if they will ever learn 
to do it quickly enough to do them any good." 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

"But after all," said the chairman, "the way 
out is perfectly plain. It's merely a matter of 
education." 

The meeting had been devoted to the subject 
of Americanization. The speakers had told of 
the many dangers which threaten the Republic. 
Allusion had been made to the melting-pot the- 
ory, and it was pointed out that instead of a 
gradual fusion of all the various elements there 
might be a violent explosion. The remedy was 
not to be found in the restriction of immigra- 
tion. The dangerous classes were not altogether 
composed of aliens. We must raise the level of 
American life. There must be more idealism, 
more intelligence, and keener sense of responsi- 
bility. The old type of citizen was not sufficient; 
we must have a new and better American. 

To all this the chairman agreed most heartily; 

he recognized the manifold dangers and the need 

of doing something. But when he uttered the 

magic word "education" all his difficulties van- 

25 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

ished. Like the successful business man that he 
was he referred the new demand to the proper 
department, with perfect confidence that it 
would be attended to by the persons in charge. 
It appears from what has been said that there is 
need of a large number of well-trained citizens. 
They must be more quick-witted, more mag- 
nanimous, more disinterested than those of the 
past generation. Moreover, they must have a 
lot of up-to-date ideas and the courage to carry 
them out. Very well, let our teachers get busy 
and turn out these new citizens in the quantity 
needed. That's what our schools and colleges 
are meant for. We support them and have a 
right to insist that they shall respond to the 
emergency. If we have to pay more than we 
have been accustomed to pay, we will put our 
hands in our pockets cheerfully. If the teachers 
will raise the whole level of American life, they 
will have earned their salaries. 

That which was most irritating in the chair- 
man was his appearance of perfect sanity. He 
made his preposterous demands in such a mat- 
ter-of-fact way that the audience took them as 
a matter of course. And yet they would have 
26 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

seen the absurdity of asking a company of en- 
gineers to raise the level of the sea. 

This general level of intelligence constitutes 
to the idealistic teacher the great difficulty in 
the practice of his art. For the present level is 
very low, and yet it is enormously difficult to 
raise any individual above it. It represents the 
average that has already been attained. To 
educate a person up to this point is compara- 
tively easy. All social attractions are favorable. 
But to educate one a little beyond is a very 
different matter. 

Up to a certain point we all believe in the 
process of leveling up. We would raise the grade 
of the highway till it gives a convenient ap- 
proach to our front door. Any uplifting of the 
road beyond that would leave us in a hole. We 
cease to regard the public improvement as a 
betterment and bring suit for damages. 

Such opposition is encountered by any one 
who undertakes to teach any truth which is higher 
than the community has heretofore believed in. 
It is not sufficient to demonstrate its reality. It 
must be repeated in one form or another until 
at last it finds access to minds that are predis- 
27 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

posed to reject it. And when it has at last been 
accepted in words it may be completely misap- 
prehended. The old notions of an earlier age 
still remain and obscure the new teaching. And 
this from no fault of the teacher, but from the 
sheer inability of the learner to make a funda- 
mental change in his way of thinking. 

It is a slow and difficult process that of edu- 
cation, but there are teachers who are not dis- 
couraged and seek to do more than confirm what 
has already been established. They seek to en- 
large the scope of the mind and to enable it to 
deal effectively with new conditions. They con- 
ceive of their function as that of the intellectual 
pioneer. All they can do is to make a beginning 
in the vast wilderness. 

In the "Dame School of Experience" I have 
tried to indicate the slow and painful process 
by which we learn to respect the actual and to 
adapt ourselves to our environment. There are 
many hard knocks before we come to have a 
decent respect for facts. There must be "line 
upon line and precept upon precept." As each 
generation begins at the beginning our systems 
of education must be largely concerned with 

28 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

the task of preserving what has been already 
gained. 

But education means something more than 
interpreting past experiences. It means also the 
creation of minds capable of experiencing deeper 
emotions and responding to finer incentives. 
Here the educator is not a copyist of something 
already existing; he is an artist creating some- 
thing which heretofore was without form. Out 
of human materials under actual conditions, and 
with such tools as are at his disposal, he endeav- 
ors to produce a better kind of man. It is a dar- 
ing attempt and involves difficulties unforeseen 
by those who lightly or unadvisedly venture 
upon the path of progress. But it is an ambition 
that inspires the great teacher, and makes his 
function supremely important. 

To teach people what they want to know and 
to show them how to do something whose use- 
fulness is already obvious to them requires pa- 
tience, but not insight. But it is quite a different 
thing to teach them what they do not want to 
know, and to induce them to exercise faculties 
which they have never before used; to enjoy 
what had been distasteful to them; to turn 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

drudgery into recreation; and to cooperate 
cheerfully with people whom they had despised 
in behalf of some good which is as yet dimly seen 
and confusedly proclaimed. It is one thing to 
teach a person to conform to a conventional 
standard of respectability. It is quite another 
thing to make him capable of a daring stroke of 
rectitude by which he may, like the ancient 
servant of Jehovah, be "numbered among the 
transgressors." It is one thing to teach the raw 
recruit in the army of humanity to keep step 
with his comrades. It is quite another thing to 
teach him to take a single step in advance — 
alone and in the dark. Yet we are all agreed that 
what is most needed is a larger number of human 
beings who are capable of moral and intellectual 
initiative. 

Out of the multitude of drillmasters in the 
educational world whose useful but unexciting 
work it is to explain the actual and to make us 
as contented with it as is possible under the cir- 
cumstances, there arise a certain number of 
creative teachers. 

Like all creators their work is complicated by 
the nature of the materials which they use. To 

30 






THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

create something out of nothing would be very 
simple — if it could be done. For the original 
nothingness could be conveniently ignored as 
a mere cipher. But when one tries to create 
something out of something else, he must under- 
stand the something else, and make allowance for 
its peculiarities. If he does not, instead of pro- 
ducing something better, he may find that the 
result of his ambitious attempt is something 
worse, or perhaps nothing at all. 

The real teacher is a radical reformer who 
habitually uses the most conservative means to 
attain revolutionary ends. By indirection he seeks 
to bring about fundamental changes which the 
more violent direct action could not accomplish. 
Education is a vast conspiracy against the exist- 
ing order. If it succeeded we should have a 
state of things quite different from anything 
which has ever been known. 

If within a year the average intelligence of the 
population of. the earth were raised ten per cent, 
what a commotion there would be ! There is not 
an institution which would not feel the shock as 
of an earthquake. What authorities would be set 
at naught, what dignitaries would be disgraced, 
31 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

what a vast number of respected leaders would 
find their occupation gone ! If with this intellec- 
tual change of level there should occur a corre- 
sponding moral uplift, the result would be, as 
the newspaper reporter would say, indescrib- 
able. I cannot imagine the confusion of values 
that would follow. 

That the best directed efforts of creative 
teachers do not result in such beneficent catas- 
trophes is due to the nature of the educational 
processes. Our native stupidities are so amply 
and variously protected that there is little 
danger that they will all give way at once. The 
zeal of the teacher is always moderated by the re- 
luctance of the pupil to entertain any idea with 
which he is not already familiar. The way of 
the uplifter is hard; and he does not need the 
scoffs of the Philistine to teach him modesty. 

Nowhere is the struggle for existence more 
fierce and the conflict between the Haves and 
the Have-nots more unrelenting than in a school- 
room. It may be disguised under the most gra- 
cious forms, and there may be all the appearance 
of a cooperative commonwealth, but as a matter 
of fact it is a revolutionary war. The real aim of 

32 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

the teacher is one which the pupil is not yet pre- 
pared to accept. The teacher wishes to improve 
the pupil's mind. But the unimproved mind is 
the only kind the pupil has, and when he uses it 
he must use it in his own way. It is with this un- 
improved mind that he passes judgment upon 
the improvements, which on the whole seem 
chimerical. 

The ulterior end of the teacher is culture, and 
as a means to this he devises various lessons, and 
proficiency is tested by periodical examinations. 
The pupil, being a severely practical person, 
bows to necessity and humors the powers that 
be by working hard enough to comply with their 
tests. 

His attitude is that of Hercules. He will per- 
form the labors which are required of him each 
day, but with a defiance of the will of him who 
arbitrarily imposes them. By and by when his 
taskmaster can think of nothing more, he will 
enjoy himself with large Herculean ease. 

In the meantime the teacher with the patience 
of hope continues the enforcement of jf'discif)lip£ 
whose purpose must necessarily be only imper- 
fectly understood. He watches the successive 

33 

\ 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

phases of a developing intelligence. He rejoices 
in the intensity of interests which he knows 
must be temporary, and in faint glimmerings 
of appreciation of what is 'permanent. The boy 
is on the way to becoming a man. It is the 
teacher's desire to help him to be a better kind 
of a man than he would be without such assist- 
ance. But only when the days of tutelage are 
over can the minds of the teacher and the learner 
really meet. 

In each step in the educational process the 
teacher must take into account the limitations 
of the pupil's mind. The new thought can only 
be entertained when it is connected with some- 
thing already known. Interest can only be 
aroused by taking advantage of interests al- 
ready existing. The effective teacher is always 
a symbolist. He has a genius for analogy. He 
teaches in parables. "This," he says, "is like 
that. The advanced lesson I am giving you to- 
day is based on the lesson you learned yesterday. 
It carries the principle, with which you are 
familiar, «y little farther." 

All this the pupil readily accepts. He takes 
the, rtzw idea as the teller takes the check of the 

< 34 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

stranger who has been introduced by a regular 
customer of the bank. He is all right having 
been properly vouched for. He understands the 
lesson sufficiently when he identifies it with what 
he knows already. The intellectual operation is 
complete. 

But to the teacher the operation was not com- 
plete. The analogy was meant to be suggestive 
and not satisfying. He meant to lure the learner 
on to receive something new. But nothing 
happened. He feels the disappointment of the 
angler when the wary fish nibbles off the bait 
without taking the hook. He has learned every- 
thing but that which the lesson was intended to 
teach. 

In the New Testament we are told how the 
young Galilean teacher charmed the multitude 
by clothing the highest spiritual truths in lan- 
guage drawn from their most familiar experi- 
ence. He told them stories, he gave them vivid 
pictures of the land they lived in. Without a 
parable spake he not unto them. The Kingdom 
of Heaven which he proclaimed he never defined 
in the abstract language of the schools. He 
never told them what it was in itself; he told 
35 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

them what it was like. It was like the things 
which farmers and fishermen encountered in 
their work, and which children were familiar 
with in their play. The Kingdom of Heaven was 
like all these things. It was all this and some- 
thing more. 

The people listened to such marvelous teach- 
ing and were stirred by it. But what did they 
learn? They learned what they were prepared 
to learn. They interpreted the words, each ac- 
cording to his own nature. It could be no other- 
wise. It was like, said the teacher, the broad 
sowing of the wheat. No matter who the sower 
might be, and how good the seed, a great deal 
depended on the soil and what was already in it. 
There were not only rocky places to be consid- 
ered where there was no depth of earth, but 
there were also birds of the air and a multitude 
of rank weeds to choke the wheat. 

Teaching by means of parables has its risks. 
"The legs of the lame," said the shrewd Hebrew 
proverb, "are not equal, so is a parable in the 
mouth of fools." And parables are not intended 
for the altogether wise. A fool-proof parable is 
an impossibility. 

36 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

There are minds which are easily satisfied. 
They grasp eagerly at an analogy and treat it as 
a complete and final definition. They accept 
a symbol, but refuse to go on to an understanding 
of the thing symbolized. "Seeing they see and 
do not perceive, hearing they hear but do not 
understand." Most popular errors have behind 
them the authority of great names. They are 
based on the misapprehended and misreported 
words of the wise. 

Here is the teacher's dilemma. If he teaches 
by parables he is liable to be grievously misun- 
derstood by the literal-minded. If he does not 
use parables he has no point of contact with the 
minds he seeks to influence. 

This dilemma of the teacher needs to be under- 
stood by any one who would do justice to historic 
religion. The Christian Church is a great edu- 
cational institution. It attempts to develop a 
certain spiritual temper and high moral idealism. 
It seeks to hand down through the generations, 
not merely a doctrine, but a peculiar kind of 
life. 

The critic asks, why does it not do this ? Why 
37 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

should there be such a vast discrepancy between 
the Christian theory and practice? 

When Latimer and his fellow-martyrs suf- 
fered in front of the ancient colleges in Oxford 
there was the customary sermon. The preacher 
chose his text from the first epistle to the Corin- 
thians, "Though he give his body to be burned 
and have not charity it profiteth nothing." His 
argument from this text of Scripture was satis- 
factory to his congregation. These bishops were 
brought here to be burned and it was evident 
that as heretics they could not possibly exercise 
the mysterious Christian virtue called charity. 
It followed that these uncharitable folks could 
not get any profit from their own burning. That 
would all go to the people who looked on and 
learned the lesson. Did it occur to any one that 
this was a bitter travesty on the Christian reli- 
gion ? Not to the preacher, nor to those who set 
fire to the fagots. Even to the martyrs the ques- 
tion was a confused one; they also had preached 
sermons at the burning of heretics. There was, 
of course, the possibility of a general religious 
toleration, but that involved a number of ideas 
for which none of the more earnest Christians of 

38 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

the day were prepared. That nobody should be 
burned in the name of Christian charity was a 
radical notion which the spirit of the age did not 
approve. 

To such glaring contradictions to the spirit of 
humanity the critic of Christianity points with 
ill-concealed scorn. "What does this talk about 
Christian charity amount to? How glaring is the 
contrast between theory and practice! A great 
organization has for more than eighteen centu- 
ries been engaged in a propaganda in behalf of 
the doctrine that we should love one another. 
Vast corporations have been created; incredible 
sums of money have been collected and dis- 
pensed; a publicity campaign has been carried on 
of such magnitude that in every city and hamlet 
people are gathered once in seven days to hear 
the proposition explained. All sorts of rewards 
have been promised to those who follow the in- 
structions of the propagandists, and in many 
parts of the world governmental authority has 
been invoked so that the education in the Chris- 
tian faith is not only free but compulsory. 

"Now look at the result in Christian Europe. 
This represents what has been accomplished up 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

to date. Is it not time to discover or to invent 
a new religion?" 

To all which the Christian teacher, chastened 
by his hard experience, is prepared to answer 
meekly: "I acknowledge the truth that lies back 
of your accusations. The results of such pro- 
longed effort do seem meager. Men do not love 
each other as our religion teaches that they 
should. But remember that we are teachers 
rather than miracle-workers, and must wait on 
the development of the human mind. 

" Suppose you try your hand at it. You need 
not talk about Christian charity which is for 
you a discredited term. Altruism suits you bet- 
ter and sounds scientific. Suppose you try to 
teach altruism on a large scale and to all sorts 
and conditions of men. And mind you play fair. 
Don't take a few selected specimens of genus 
homo like yourself who are by nature altruistic. 
That's too easy. We Christians have done that 
all along. We have had in the worst days a class 
of people named saints. We did not have to 
teach them altruism; they knew all about that 
already. We had to teach them common sense 
which was more difficult for them. 

40 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

"What would you do with a person who was 
naturally and enthusiastically selfish ? There was 
only one thing he cared for and that was to have 
his own way. All the other people were so many 
obstacles to be brushed aside. All his powers 
were enlisted in the effort to grab everything in 
sight. How would you make him understand 
the meaning of altruism, and induce him to pre- 
fer it ? If you talked to him as you have talked 
to me your breath would be wasted. It would do 
no good to ask him to renounce himself; that is 
the way many of our Christian saints talked. 
They tried to magnify the idea of selflessness and 
make it attractive to the natural man, but they 
could not do it. The only thing he knew about 
was himself and to give up that was to choose 
nothingness." 

Our Christian teaching has taken another 
turn. We have appealed to something the man 
already has, self-love; and we have used that as 
a symbol and measure of something which we 
wish him to attain. "Love thy neighbor as thy- 
self." This is an appeal to something that seems 
understandable. There is a possibility of making 
a beginning — but it is only a beginning. For 

41 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

the question arises, Who is my neighbor, and 
how can I love him as I love myself? The pas- 
sage from egoism to altruism is not an easy one. 
There must be many desert wanderings, with 
perhaps only a Pisgah sight at last. 

A favorite mediaeval story was that of Robert 
the Devil and his conversion. Robert had been 
a notorious robber and the all-around villain in 
whom the story-tellers delighted. He gathered 
around him a band of outlaws who murdered 
priests and desecrated churches and filled the 
countryside with the terror of his name. Sud- 
denly he saw his sins and repented and resolved 
to become a saint. His first step as a Christian 
man was to call his band together in his castle. 
When the doors were locked, he turned the revels 
into an experience meeting and told what the 
Lord had done for his soul. With moving elo- 
quence he asked his followers to do at once as he 
had done, renounce utterly their sins and go 
with him to Rome to ask the Holy Father to give 
them some pious task to perform. It was all 
very sudden to this godless crew and they hesi- 
tated. But Robert was very much in earnest 
and felt that the King's business required haste. 

42 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

So not waiting for further discussion he fell upon 
them with his sword and killed every man, 
whereupon, with penitent heart and contrite 
prayers, he proceeded to Rome to inquire what 
he should do next. 

Robert's conversion left much to be desired, 
but was its imperfectness the fault of the priest 
whose words had touched his heart? Suppose he 
had been fortunate enough to have been a lec- 
turer of the Society for Ethical Culture, and had 
been stirred to undertake a new life. His first 
impulse would have been to slay all who were 
not willing at once to join the society. To re- 
frain from such an act would imply a degree of 
ethical culture which Robert had not yet had 
time either to comprehend or to desire. 

Let us suppose that Paul in his praise of char- 
ity had sought to avoid the misuse of his refer- 
ence to fire, and used water instead. His text 
would then have been used on occasions when 
heretics were drowned. 

I cannot see that teachers of science have been 
any more successful than have been the teachers 
of religion when they have attempted to intro- 
duce a new idea. They also are symbolists and 

43 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

their symbols are continually misapprehended 
and their doctrines misapplied. 

The very term "law of nature" is a highly 
poetical figure of speech. It is taken from a fa- 
miliar experience of a purely human relationship. 
When the natural philosopher tries to make us 
understand that there are sequences which so 
far as our observation goes are invariable, he 
uses this method of teaching. 

"You know about law, don't you? When the 
traffic policeman says stop, you obey him be- 
cause he represents the law. It's something 
more than his momentary will. It's something 
that's the same to-day and yesterday and to- 
morrow. Stand near the crossing for an hour, 
and you will see that everybody acts just as you 
do. If somebody is slow in obeying, the police- 
man runs him in. Now in nature we observe 
something like that. The little drops of water 
and the little grains of sand act according to 
laws. The chemist comes to recognize each dif- 
ferent kind of a molecule by its behavior, for it 
always behaves in the same way. It's the same 
with folks. We are under the reign of law. There 
are the laws of health. If we obey them we are 

44 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

well. There is the law of supply and demand, 
and the law of survival of the fittest and all the 
rest that you should know about." 

And the docile hearer of the scientific word 
says, "Oh, yes, I understand. We are all under 
the reign of law. If we obey the law we have 
done our duty. If we disobey we suffer the pen- 
alty." 

And then all the old familiar ideas about the 
legislator and judge and policeman come back. 
The law is all right and we ought to obey it, but 
after all the great thing is not to be caught. Now 
and then a small boy manages to take an orange 
from the Italian's cart and get away with it. 
Sometimes the policeman is n't watching and 
then we can break the law and nothing will hap- 
pen to us. But it's better on the whole to be 
law-abiding. 

There is that blessed law of Evolution. It's 
just the opposite of Revolution. We ought to 
obey the evolutionary law, for it really is for our 
benefit. It means that we ought to go slowly 
when we try to improve things. If we go too 
fast there 's no knowing what might happen. We 
might upset everything we know anything about. 
45 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

And there is that law of natural selection 
which Darwin discovered. We know what selec- 
tion means; we practice it ourselves. We go to 
the town meeting to choose men to do the town's 
business for the next year. We call them " Se- 
lectmen." They were selected as those who were 
fittest to represent us. Or we want to go from 
New York to Chicago. There are several ways 
of going, but we select the Pennsylvania because 
we want to stop at Pittsburgh on the way. In 
each case we know what we want and we select 
what seems to us the best way to get it. 

Now it's the same way with Nature. Natural 
selection is Nature's way of doing what we do 
when we choose our selectmen or go on a railroad 
journey. Nature selects those who are fitted to 
survive, and she goes about it in a perfectly 
ruthless, but on the whole effective, manner. 
She takes millions of living things and does all 
sorts of things to them. Some of them survive. 
They are the fittest. 

The more faithfully we copy this natural 

method of selection the better for us. When we 

select a type of humanity which cannot stand 

this survival test, and try to develop its present 

46 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

weakness into a new kind of strength, we are 
interfering with Nature. We are breaking the 
law and will inevitably come to grief. 

All this confusion of thought is precisely such 
as every teacher is familiar with in the class- 
room. The child picks up a phrase which he 
thinks he understands and does not. Then from 
a verbal mistake he draws conclusions. The 
more logical his mind the farther he is led from 
reality. He argues from one analogy to another 
till at last he is a perfect wilderness of practical 
errors. 

A law of nature has one analogy to a human 
law; in almost every other respect it is quite 
unlike. The idea of obedience or disobedience 
leads us far astray. I can disobey the law of 
Massachusetts. But when I attempt to disobey 
the law of gravitation I simply illustrate it. 

As for natural selection, it is one of those 
paradoxical phrases which teachers sometimes 
throw out to stimulate curiosity on the part of 
torpid pupils. There is just enough of an anal- 
ogy to make it interesting, but the paradox is 
obvious. The natural process which is described 
is just the opposite of the human process of 
47 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

selection. In no way can it be a model for our 
action, unless we give up what is distinctive in 
rational choice. 

In reforming the civil service the selective 
method was changed. Instead of allowing the 
heads of departments to choose their subordi- 
nates arbitrarily the whole matter was arranged 
by law. Examinations are held by which those 
unfit for the position are rejected. But these 
tests are established with a definite purpose. 
The applicant must not merely be able to sur- 
vive, he must be fit to perform certain definite 
work. The examinations are to determine that 
particular ability. 

If the department should make the rule that 
every candidate should be thrown into the 
ocean and those who were able to find a raft or 
to swim ashore should receive the appointment, 
we should hardly say these men were selected. 
We should say that entry into government 
service was left to chance. 

If the discoverers of physical facts and their 
relations one to another have difficulty in im- 
parting their fundamental ideas, is it any won- 
der that those who are dealing with human 

48 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

affairs are baffled? They have only words 
with which to communicate thought; and every 
word has many meanings and associations. 
Even if a new word were invented it would mean 
nothing unless defined by old words. As for the 
new thought it must wait for the growth of the 
mind capable of thinking it. 

However explicit he may be in his instruction 
the teacher must be prepared to face the fact 
that whatever is not congenial to the mind of the 
pupil will be misapprehended. This misappre- 
hension will persist until such time as the pupil 
is developed to a point where he sees the truth 
for himself. 

When that time is reached, the teacher must 
summon all his disinterested virtue to console 
him in his hour of triumph. For it means that 
the disciple has thrown off the authority of the 
master. The reality which he now sees is quite 
different from the lessons he had learned by 
rote. In the exuberance of his freshly achieved 
independence he looks back scornfully on the 
years of his tutelage. 

The teacher wistfully watches him as he goes 
49 



THE TEACHER'S DILEMMA 

on his way with the unthankful confidence 
of youth. "I wonder," he says, "if he will 
ever understand that it was only that part of 
my teaching that he misapprehended that he 
has rejected; and that what he has just found 
out for himself is what during these long years 
I have been vainly trying to teach." 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE TO 
BE SOMEBODY ELSE 

Several years ago a young man came to my 
study with a manuscript which he wished me to 
criticize. 

"It is only a little bit of my work," he said 
modestly, "and it will not take you long to look 
it over. In fact it is only the first chapter, in 
which I explain the Universe." 

I suppose that we have all had moments of 
sudden illumination when it occurred to us that 
we had explained the Universe, and it was so 
easy for us that we wondered why we had not 
done it before. Some thought drifted into our 
mind and filled us with vague forebodings of 
omniscience. It was not an ordinary thought, 
that explained only a fragment of existence. It 
explained everything. It proved one thing and 
it proved the opposite just as well. It explained 
why things are as they are, and if it should turn 
out that they are not that way at all, it would 
prove that fact also. In the light of our great 
thought chaos seemed rational. 

51 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

Such thoughts usually occur about four 
o'clock in the morning. Having explained the 
Universe, we relapse into satisfied slumber. 
When, a few hours later, we rise, we wonder 
what the explanation was. 

Now and then, however, one of these highly- 
explanatory ideas remains to comfort us in our 
waking hours. Such a thought is that which I 
here throw out, and which has doubtless at some 
early hour occurred to most of my readers. It is 
that every man has a natural desire to be some- 
body else. 

This does not explain the Universe, but it ex- 
plains that perplexing part of it which we call 
Human Nature. It explains why so many intel- 
ligent people, who deal skillfully with matters of 
fact, make such a mess of it when they deal with 
their fellow creatures. It explains why we get 
on as well as we do with strangers, and why we 
do not get on better with our friends. It explains 
why people are so often offended when we say 
nice things about them, and why it is that, when 
we say harsh things about them, they take it as 
a compliment. It explains why people marry 
their opposites and why they live happily ever 

52 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

afterwards. It also explains why some people 
don't. It explains the meaning of tact and its 
opposite. 

The tactless person treats a person according 
to a scientific method as if he were a thing. 
Now, in dealing with a thing, you must first find 
out what it is, and then act accordingly. But 
with a person, you must first find out what he is 
and then carefully conceal from him the fact 
that you have made the discovery. The tactless 
person can never be made to understand this. 
He prides himself on taking people as they are 
without being aware that that is not the way 
they want to be taken. 

He has a keen eye for the obvious, and calls 
attention to it. Age, sex, color, nationality, 
previous condition of servitude, and all the facts 
that are interesting to the census-taker, are ap- 
parent to him and are made the basis of his con- 
versation. When he meets one who is older than 
he, he is conscious of the fact, and emphasizes 
by every polite attention the disparity in years. 
He has an idea that at a certain period in life the 
highest tribute of respect is to be urged to rise 
out of one chair and take another that is presum- 

53 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

ably more comfortable. It does not occur to him 
that there may remain any tastes that are not 
sedentary. On the other hand, he sees a callow 
youth and addresses himself to the obvious cal- 
lowness, and thereby makes himself thoroughly 
disliked. For, strange to say, the youth prefers to 
be addressed as a person of precocious maturity. 

The literalist, observing that most people talk 
shop, takes it for granted that they like to talk 
shop. This is a mistake. They do it because it is 
the easiest thing to do, but they resent having 
attention called to their limitations. A man's 
profession does not necessarily coincide with his 
natural aptitude or with his predominant desire. 
When you meet a member of the Supreme Court 
you may assume that he is gifted with a judicial 
mind. But it does not follow that that is the 
only quality of mind he has; nor that when, out 
of court, he gives you a piece of his mind, it will 
be a piece of his judicial mind that he gives. 

My acquaintance with royalty is limited to 
photographs of royal groups, which exhibit a 
high degree of domesticity. It would seem that 
the business of royalty when pursued as a steady 
job becomes tiresome, and that when they have 

54 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

their pictures taken they endeavor to look as 
much like ordinary folks as possible — and they 
usually succeed. 

The member of one profession is always flat- 
tered by being taken for a skilled practitioner of 
another. Try it on your minister. Instead of 
saying, "That was an excellent sermon of yours 
this morning," say, "As I listened to your cogent 
argument, I thought what a successful lawyer 
you would have made." Then he will say, "I did 
think of taking to the law." 

If you had belonged to the court of Frederick 
the Great you would have proved a poor court- 
ier indeed if you had praised His Majesty's 
campaigns. Frederick knew that he was a Prus- 
sian general, but he wanted to be a French liter- 
ary man. If you wished to gain his favor you 
should have told him that in your opinion he 
excelled Voltaire. 

We do not like to have too much attention 
drawn to our present circumstances. They may 
be well enough in their way, but we can think of 
something which would be more fitting for us. 
We have either seen better days or we expect 
them. 

55 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

Suppose you had visited Napoleon in Elba 
and had sought to ingratiate yourself with him. 

"Sire," you would have said, "this is a beau- 
tiful little empire of yours, so snug and cozy and 
quiet. It is just such a domain as is suited to 
a man in your condition. The climate is excel- 
lent. Everything is peaceful. It must be delight- 
ful to rule where everything is arranged for you 
and the details are taken care of by others. As 
I came to your dominion I saw a line of British 
frigates guarding your shores. The evidences of 
such thoughtfulness are everywhere." 

Your praise of his present condition would 
not have endeared you to Napoleon. You were 
addressing him as the Emperor of Elba. In his 
own eyes he was Emperor, though in Elba. 

It is such a misapprehension which irritates 
any mature human being when his environment 
is taken as the measure of his personality. 

The man with a literal mind moves in a per- 
petual comedy of errors. It is not a question of 
two Dromios. There are half a dozen Dromios 
under one hat. 

How casually introductions are made, as if it 
were the easiest thing in the world to make two 

56 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

human beings acquainted! Your friend says, 
"I want you to know Mr. Stifflekin," and you 
say that you are happy to know him. But does 
either of you know the enigma that goes under 
the name of Stifflekin? You may know what he 
looks like and where he resides and what he does 
for a living. But that is all in the present tense. 
To really know him you must not only know 
what he is but what he used to be; what he used 
to think he was; what he used to think he ought 
to be and might be if he worked hard enough. 
You must know what he might have been if cer- 
tain things had happened otherwise, and you 
must know what might have happened otherwise 
if he had been otherwise. All these complexities 
are a part of his own dim apprehension of him- 
self. They are what make him so much more 
interesting to himself than he is to any one else. 

It is this consciousness of the inadequacy of 
our knowledge which makes us so embarrassed 
when we offer any service to another. Will he 
take it in the spirit in which it is given? 

That was an awkward moment when Stanley, 
after all his hardships in his search for Dr. Liv- 
ingstone, at last found the Doctor by a lake in 
57 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

Central Africa. Stanley held out his hand and 
said stiffly, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" 
Stanley had heroically plunged through the 
equatorial forests to find Livingstone and to 
bring him back to civilization. But Livingstone 
was not particularly anxious to be found, and 
had a decided objection to being brought back 
to civilization. What he wanted was a new ad- 
venture. Stanley did not find the real Living- 
stone till he discovered that the old man was as 
young at heart as himself. The two men became 
acquainted only when they began to plan a new 
expedition to find the source of the Nile. 

The natural desire of every man to be some- 
body else explains many of the minor irritations 
of life. It prevents that perfect organization of 
society in which every one should know his place 
and keep it. The desire to be somebody else 
leads us to practice on work that does not strictly 
belong to us. We all have aptitudes and talents 
that overflow the narrow bounds of our trade or 
profession. Every man feels that he is bigger 
than his job, and he is all the time doing what 
theologians called "works of supererogation." 

58 






EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

The serious-minded housemaid is not content 
to do what she is told to do. She has an unex- 
pended balance of energy. She wants to be a 
general household reformer. So she goes to the 
desk of the titular master of the house and gives 
it a thorough reformation. She arranges the 
papers according to her idea of neatness. When 
the poor gentleman returns and finds his familiar 
chaos transformed into a hateful order, he be- 
comes a reactionary. 

The serious manager of a street railway com- 
pany is not content with the simple duty of 
transporting passengers cheaply and comfort- 
ably. He wants to exercise the functions of a 
lecturer in an ethical culture society. While the 
transported victim is swaying precariously from 
the end of a strap he reads a notice urging him 
to practice Christian courtesy and not to push. 
While the poor wretch pores over this counsel of 
perfection, he feels like answering as did Junius 
to the Duke of Grafton, "My Lord, injuries 
may be atoned for and forgiven, but insults 
admit of no compensation." 

A man enters a barber shop with the simple 
desire of being shaved. But he meets with the 
59 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

more ambitious desires of the barber. The seri- 
ous barber is not content with any slight con- 
tribution to human welfare. He insists that his 
client shall be shampooed, manicured, massaged, 
steamed beneath boiling towels, cooled off by 
electric fans, and, while all this is going on, that 
he shall have his boots blacked. 

Have you never marveled at the patience of 
people in having so many things done to them 
that they don't want, just to avoid hurting the 
feelings of professional people who want to do 
more than is expected of them ? You watch the 
stoical countenance of the passenger in a Pull- 
man car as he stands up to be brushed. The 
chances are that he does n't want to be brushed. 
He would prefer to leave the dust on his coat 
rather than to be compelled to swallow it. But 
he knows what is expected of him. It is a part 
of the solemn ritual of traveling. It precedes the 
offering. 

The fact that every man desires to be some- 
body else explains many of the aberrations of 
artists and literary men. The painters, drama- 
tists, musicians, poets, and novelists are just as 
human as housemaids and railway managers and 

60 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

porters. They want to do "all the good they 
can to all the people they can in all the ways 
they can." They get tired of the ways they are 
used to and like to try new combinations. So 
they are continually mixing things. The prac- 
titioner of one art tries to produce effects that 
are proper to another art. 

A musician wants to be a painter and use his 
violin as if it were a brush. He would have us 
see the sunset glories that he is painting for us. 
A painter wants to be a musician and paint sym- 
phonies, and he is grieved because the unin- 
structed cannot hear his pictures, although the 
colors do swear at each other. Another painter 
wants to be an architect and build up his picture 
as if it were made of cubes of brick. It looks like 
brick-work, but to the natural eye it does n't 
look like a picture. A prose-writer gets tired of 
writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he be- 
gins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on 
writing prose. 

You go to the theater with the simple-minded 
Shakespearean idea that the play's the thing. 
But the playwright wants to be a pathologist. 
So you discover that you have dropped into a 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

gruesome clinic. You sought innocent relaxa- 
tion, but you are one of the non-elect and have 
gone to the place prepared for you. You must 
see the thing through. The fact that you have 
troubles of your own is not a sufficient claim for 
exemption. 

Or you take up a novel expecting it to be a 
work of fiction. But the novelist has other views. 
He wants to be your spiritual adviser. He must 
do something to your mind, he must rearrange 
your fundamental ideas, he must massage your 
soul, and generally brush you off. All this in 
spite of the fact that you don't want to be 
brushed off and set to rights. You don't want 
him to do anything to your mind. It's the only 
mind you have and you need it in your own busi- 
ness. 

But if the desire of every man to be somebody 
else accounts for many whimsicalities of human 
conduct and for many aberrations in the arts, 
it cannot be lightly dismissed as belonging only 
to the realm of comedy. It has its origin in the 
nature of things. The reason why every man 
wants to be somebody -else is that he can remem- 
ber the time when he was somebody else. What 

62 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

we call personal identity is a very changeable 
thing, as all of us realize when we look over old 
photographs and read old letters. 

The oldest man now living is but a few years 
removed from the undifferentiated germ-plasm, 
which might have developed into almost any- 
thing. In the beginning he was a bundle of pos- 
sibilities. Every actuality that is developed 
means a decrease in the rich variety of possibil- 
ities. In becoming one thing it becomes impos- 
sible to be something else. 

The delight in being a boy lies in the fact that 
the possibilities are still manifold. The boy feels 
that he can be anything that he desires. He is 
conscious that he has capacities that would 
make him a successful banker. On the other 
hand, there are attractions in a life of adventure 
in the South Seas. It would be pleasant to lie 
under a bread-fruit tree and let the fruit drop 
into his mouth, to the admiration of the gentle 
savages who would gather about him. Or he 
might be a saint — not a commonplace modern 
saint who does chores and attends tiresome com- 
mittee meetings, but a saint such as one reads 
about, who gives away his rich robes and his 
63 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

purse of gold to the first beggar he meets, and 
then goes on his carefree way through the forest 
to convert interesting robbers. He feels that he 
might practice that kind of unscientific charity, 
if his father would furnish him with the money 
to give away. 

But by and by he learns that making a suc- 
cess in the banking business is not consistent 
with excursions to the South Seas or with the 
more picturesque and unusual forms of saintli- 
ness. If he is to be in a bank he must do as the 
bankers do. 

Parents and teachers conspire together to 
make a man of him, which means making a par- 
ticular kind of man of him. All mental processes 
which are not useful must be suppressed. The 
sum of their admonitions is that he must pay 
attention. That is precisely what he is doing. 
He is paying attention to a variety of things that 
escape the adult mind. As he wriggles on the 
bench in the schoolroom, he pays attention to 
all that is going on. He attends to what is going 
on out-of-doors; he sees the weak points of his 
fellow pupils, against whom he is planning puni- 
tive expeditions; and he is delightfully conscious 

64 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

of the idiosyncrasies of the teacher. Moreover, 
he is a youthful artist and his sketches from life 
give acute joy to his contemporaries when they 
are furtively passed around. 

But the schoolmaster says sternly, "My boy, 
you must learn to pay attention; that is to say, 
you must not pay attention to so many things, 
but you must pay attention to one thing, namely 
the second declension." 

Now the second declension is the least inter- 
esting thing in the room, but unless he confines 
his attention to it he will never learn it. Educa- 
tion demands narrowing of attention in the inter- 
est of efficiency. 

A man may, by dint of application to a par- 
ticular subject, become a successful merchant or 
real-estate man or chemist or overseer of the 
poor. But he cannot be all these things at the 
same time. He must make his choice. Having in 
the presence of witnesses taken himself for better 
for worse, he must, forsaking all others, cleave to 
that alone. The consequence is that, by the time 
he is forty, he has become one kind of a man, and 
is able to do one kind of work. He has acquired 
a stock, of ideas true enough for his purposes, but 

65 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

not so transcendentally true as to interfere with 
his business. His neighbors know where to find 
him, and they do not need to take a spiritual ele- 
vator. He does business on the ground floor. He 
has gained in practicality, but has lost in the 
quality of interestingness. 

The old prophet declared that the young men 
dream dreams and the old men see visions, but 
he did not say anything about the middle-aged 
men. They have to look after the business end. 

But has the man whose working hours are so 
full of responsibilities changed so much as he 
seems to have done? When he is talking shop is 
he "all there"? I think not. There are elusive 
personalities that are in hiding. As the ram- 
bling mansions of the old Catholic families had 
secret panels opening into the "priest's hole," 
to which the family resorted for spiritual com- 
fort, so in the mind of the most successful man 
there are secret chambers where are hidden his 
unsuccessful ventures, his romantic ambitions, 
his unfulfilled promises. All that he dreamed of 
as possible is somewhere concealed in the man's 
heart. He would not for the world have the 
public know how much he cares for the selves 

66 






EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

that have not had a fair chance to come into the 
light of day. You do not know a man until you 
know his lost Atlantis, and his Utopia for which 
he still hopes to set sail. 

When Dogberry asserted that he was "as 
pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina" and 
"one that hath two gowns and everything hand- 
some about him," he was pointing out what he 
deemed to be quite obvious. It was in a more 
intimate tone that he boasted, "and a fellow 
that hath had losses." 

When Julius Caesar rode through the streets of 
Rome in his chariot, his laurel crown seemed to 
the populace a symbol of his present greatness. 
But gossip has it that Caesar at that time de- 
sired to be younger than he was, and that before 
appearing in public he carefully arranged his 
laurel wreath so as to conceal the fact that he 
had had losses. 

Much that passes for pride in the behavior of 
the great comes from the fear of the betrayal of 
emotions that belong to a simpler manner of life. 
When the sons of Jacob saw the great Egyptian 
officer to whom they appealed turn away from 
them, they little knew what was going on. 

67 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

"And Joseph made haste, for his bowels did 
yearn upon his brother : and he sought where to 
weep; and he entered into his chamber, and 
wept there. And he washed his face, and went 
out, and refrained himself." Joseph did n't want 
to be a great man. He wanted to be human. 
It was hard to refrain himself. 

What of the lost arts of childhood, the lost 
audacities and ambitions and romantic admira- 
tions of adolescence? What becomes of the 
sympathies which make us feel our kinship to all 
sorts of people ? What becomes of the early curi- 
osity in regard to things which were none of our 
business ? We ask as Saint Paul asked of the Ga- 
latians, "Ye began well; who did hinder you?" 

The answer is not wholly to our discredit. 
We do not develop all parts of our nature be- 
cause we are not allowed to do so. Walt Whit- 
man might exult over the Spontaneous Me. 
But nobody is paid for being spontaneous. A 
spontaneous switchman on the railway would 
be a menace to the traveling public. We prefer 
some one less temperamental. 

As civilization advances and work becomes 
68 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

more specialized, it becomes impossible for any 
one to find free and full development for all his 
natural powers in any recognized occupation. 
What then becomes of the other selves? The 
answer must be that playgrounds must be 
provided for them outside the confines of daily 
business. As work becomes more engrossing and 
narrowing the need is more urgent for recognized 
and carefully guarded periods of leisure. 

The old Hebrew sage declared, "Wisdom 
cometh from the opportunity of leisure." It 
does not mean that a wise man must belong to 
what we call the leisure classes. It means that if 
one has only a little free time at his disposal, he 
must use that time for the refreshment of his 
hidden selves. If he cannot have a sabbath rest 
of twenty-four hours, he must learn to sanctify 
little sabbaths, it may be of ten minutes' length. 
In them he shall do no manner of work. It is 
not enough that the self that works and receives 
wages shall be recognized and protected; the 
world must be made safe for our other selves. 
Does not the Declaration of Independence say 
that every man has an inalienable right to the 
pursuit of happiness ? 

69 



EVERY MAN'S NATURAL DESIRE 

To realize that men are not satisfied with them- 
selves requires imagination, and we have had a 
terrible example of what misfortunes come from 
the lack of imagination. The Prussian militarists 
had a painstaking knowledge of facts, but they 
had a contempt for human nature. Their tact- 
lessness was almost beyond belief. They treated 
persons as if they were things. They treated 
facts with deadly seriousness, but had no regard 
for feelings. They had spies all over the world to 
report all that could be seen, but they took no 
account of what could not be seen. So, whilethey 
were dealing scientifically with the obvious facts 
and forces, all the hidden powers of the human 
soul were being turned against them. Prussian- 
ism insisted on highly specialized men who have 
no sympathies to interfere with their efficiency. 
Having adopted a standard, all variation must 
be suppressed. It was against this effort to sup- 
press the human variations that the world fought. 
We did not want all men to be reduced to one 
pattern. And against the effort to produce a 
monotonous uniformity we must keep on fight- 
ing. It was of little use to dethrone the Kaiser if 
we submit to other tyrants of our own making. 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

About a hundred years ago the Reverend Isaac 
Taylor published a book entitled "Scenes in 
America for the Amusement and Instruction of 
Tarry-at-Home Travellers." One of the illustra- 
tions was a highly colored picture of Pizarro in 
gorgeous garments. A formidable person, this 
Pizarro, but he had one fatal flaw which was 
pointed out to the youthful reader, who there- 
upon falls into poetry and cries out tauntingly: 

"Ah, Mr. Pizarro, your coat's very fine, 
Pearl, purple, and gold well refined; 
But certain it is, all these fine garments may 
But cover an ignorant mind. 
Your fin'ry and grandeur are splendid, indeed, 
But then you 're a dunce, sir, you know you can't read. 

"Now, thanks to my friends, if I'm not very fine, 
My clothes are sufficient, you see. 
I am but a child, I can call nothing mine, 
My parents and friends command me. 
In pretty books tho' I have treasures indeed, 
Because, tho' a child, I am able to read." 

Here we have an illustration of one of those 
mortal antipathies which are transmitted from 
one generation to another. It is the ancient feud 

71 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

between the literate and the illiterate. The 
tarry-at-home travelers look down upon Mr. 
Pizarro with scorn, in which they are encouraged 
by their elders. 

To look a gift horse in the mouth is justly 
considered the height of ungraciousness. Among 
the greatest gifts to humanity has been that of 
reading and writing; and though it may have its 
drawbacks, its value is not to be disputed. The 
invention of the alphabet was a great achieve- 
ment, and we now find it difficult to imagine how 
we could get on without it. The later invention 
of printing from movable types added vastly to 
the conveniences of human intercourse. What 
had been intellectual luxuries were brought 
within the reach of all. 

Literacy, in the sense of ability to read, is no 
longer an unusual condition. Society is still 
sharply divided into the two great classes, the. 
literate and the illiterate; but the latter are being 
slowly driven to the wall. In most civilized 
countries the powers of the laws are invoked 
against them, and their numbers are continually 
reduced, in spite of the fact that the birth-rate 
is in their favor. 

72 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

All this is very gratifying. In our day and 
country, where education in the alphabet is free 
and compulsory, it is a disgrace to be illiterate. 
The adult who refuses to learn his letters has 
doubtless refused to learn a great many other 
things that would be good for him. He is gener- 
ally of a stubbornly unteachable disposition and 
he is more or less a menace to the community. 

But though in our day the illiterates have 
fallen into a low estate, and are distinctly be- 
hind the times, it was not always thus. There 
was a time when the illiterate intellectuals did 
their own thinking without the aid of labor-sav- 
ing machinery, and they often did it surprisingly 
well. Among some groups this has continued 
to recent times. 

In a newspaper of the fifties of the last cen- 
tury I came across an account of a meeting of 
the Presbytery of Cincinnati, devoted to the 
cause of missions. The moderator made a long 
address, which was printed in full. It was 
rather dull and complacent. At the end he intro- 
duced a Sioux chieftain as representing a people 
sadly in need of missionary attention. The In- 
dian's reply contrasted sharply with the address 

73 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

to which he had politely listened. He said, "My 
people are not like your people. You have 
books. You listen to what men said who lived 
long ago and far away. You see what they saw; 
you do what they did ; you hear what they heard ; 
you think what they thought. My people can- 
not do this. We cannot read. We can only see 
with our own eyes, and hear with our own ears, 
and think with our own minds." 

I suspect that the Indian chief was not unaware 
that he was the mental superior of the person 
he was addressing, and that he attributed this 
superiority to his illiteracy. His irony was that 
of a gentleman of the old school humoring the 
foibles of the newly rich. 

In this I think he was mistaken. It does not 
follow that a person loses the power of direct 
observation because he has learned to read, any 
more than that the possession of an automobile 
deprives one of the use of his own legs. It is 
quite possible to follow the words of a book 
with as keen an eye for reality as that of the 
Indian on the warpath. 

Nevertheless, the remarks of the illiterate 
critic are worth considering. As fingers were be- 

74 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

fore forks, so culture was before books. Reading, 
while an admirable exercise, is no substitute for 
direct observation of nature or for the ancient 
art of meditation. It has dangers of its own. 

All the arts had their origin, and reached a 
high degree of development, among people who 
were unable to read or write. These gifted il- 
literates, while they had their limitations, had 
one great advantage over us — they always 
knew what they were about. When they were 
doing one thing they were not under the im- 
pression that they were doing something else. 
Each art was distinct, and the work of art was 
not confused with somebody's description of it. 

We literates have been taught to read poetry, 
and taught also that it is highly commendable 
to enjoy it. In order to know what kind of 
poetry ought to be especially enjoyed, we read 
other books, written by critics. In order tounder- 
stand what the poetry that ought to be admired 
means, we read other books by professional gram- 
marians. By the time we have finished this prepar- 
atory reading, we are somewhat confused. We are 
in doubt as to what poetry actually is, and how it 
differs from prose. In this predicament we fall 
75 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

back on the printer. If every line begins with a 
capital letter, we assume that it is poetry. 

In the old illiterate days there were no such 
difficulties. There were no books of poems to be 
criticized. People got their poetry direct from 
the poet and saw him in the act of making it. 
There was no possibility of mistake. 

Poetry was the form of speech used by a poet. 
When a person who was not a poet tried to say 
the same thing he said it differently: that was 
prose. 

The poet was a care-free person who went 
about uttering what was in his heart. You 
never knew what he was going to say till he said 
it, but you were quite sure he would say it 
poetically, that is, according to his own nature. 
That was the license that you gave him. It was 
not because he was wiser than other men that 
you listened to him, but because he gave you a 
peculiar pleasure. There was a lilt in his voice 
and a fire in his eye that strangely moved you. 
You never got tired listening to him as you did 
to the droning elders of your tribe. It was like 
playing truant from the humdrum world. 

We literates have upon our shelves ponderous 
76 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

historical works written by learned men for our 
edification. These volumes await some hours of 
leisure which are long delayed. But when one 
speaks of History as an art, we are often con- 
fused. We think of a book, and not of an artist 
at work upon living materials. In the days of 
unabashed illiteracy every community had its 
historian. He was the story-teller of the tribe. 
The sources on which he drew were not dusty 
parchments, but the memories of men who 
could tell him of the stirring events in which 
they had taken part, and of the traditions 
handed down to them by their fathers. 

One who practiced this art had to have a 
good memory, but he must not allow it to be 
overloaded. To try to salvage too much from 
the past was to invite disaster: all would be 
swallowed up in the black waters of oblivion. 

He must have a good judgment in selecting 
the incidents to be preserved. His history must 
be composed of memorable things; they were the 
only things that could be remembered. There 
must always be a vital connection between the 
incidents, so that the Past may live again in the 
Present. A tale that is printed may be cluttered 
77 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

up with all sorts of learned irrelevancies, but a 
tale that is told must hold the listeners' atten- 
tion. The illiterate historian had no way of 
reaching posterity except by telling his story in 
such a vivid and dramatic way that some of his 
listeners would tell it again to their children. 
That is what made him such a consummate 
artist. A story might be told in a dozen different 
ways and each time be forgotten. At last, in a 
happy moment, is achieved immortality. In these 
primitive tales we have an art which the skilled 
literary man cannot improve. 

The invention of printing has produced a 
change like that which has taken place in mod- 
ern manufacture. There has been a vast in- 
crease in quantity, but with danger to the 
quality of the product. There has been also a 
tendency to standardization, with a threat to 
the individuality of the producer. Once the 
craftsman worked in his little shop open to the 
view of all interested persons. They could watch 
him at work and see each personal touch. Now 
there is less room for improvisation. 

The literate person gets his ideas from two 

sources. There is the field of personal experience, 

78 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

which is essentially the same as that of his il- 
literate ancestors. His senses are continually 
informing him of what happens in his immediate 
vicinity. He exchanges thoughts with his neigh- 
bors; he reasons with himself in regard to the 
expediency of certain actions; he learns many 
homely and wholesome truths by experience. 
But he is also acted upon by a literary environ- 
ment. He cannot remember the time when he 
did not know how to read; and it is very hard 
for him to distinguish between the ideas which 
came to him directly and those which came in- 
directly. Often it is the book which has made 
the most powerful influence on his mind. 

A New Testament writer compares the for- 
getful hearer of the word to a man who, seeing 
his natural face in a glass, goes his way and 
straightway forgetteth what manner of man he 
is. He might have gone further, and said that 
the person who looks ever so carefully at his re- 
flection in a mirror gets only a misleading im- 
pression of what manner of person he is. He 
never really sees his own face as his neighbor 
sees it. 

It is the boast of the literary artist that he 
79 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

holds the mirror up to Nature. But the mirror 
is nothing more or less than his own mind, and 
the reflection must depend upon the qualities of 
that mind. The mirror may be cracked, it may 
have all sorts of convexities and concavities, its 
original brightness may have been lost. All 
kinds of distortions and flatteries are possible. 
Some minds are capable only of caricature, and 
every object reflected becomes amusing. Others 
invest the most trifling circumstance with mys- 
tery and dignity. 

The most perfect artist in words cannot ex- 
press a higher or larger truth than he is capable 
of feeling. Only so much of reality as he can 
comprehend can he offer to the reader. 

This being so, it might be supposed that we 
would read warily, and be skeptical in regard to 
those who sought to influence us. We have eyes 
to see as well as they, and our vision of reality is 
to be preferred to their report. 

This is what we do in conversation, and it is 
what gives conversation its charm. Among in- 
tellectual equals there is no dogmatizing, and 
yet the fullest expression of individual opinion. 
The pleasure and profit come from the fact that 

80 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

each mind has approached the fact from a dif- 
ferent angle, and one view may be used to cor- 
rect another. 

But we are superstitious creatures, and we 
are easily imposed upon by print. Curiously 
enough we are apt to attribute a greater validity 
to what we have read than to what we have seen 
or heard. We are more likely to believe what we 
have read in the daily newspaper than what our 
neighbor tells us. This is because we know our 
neighbor, and we do not know the young man 
who wrote the paragraph for the paper. The 
fact that thousands of our fellow citizens are 
reading the same words makes an impression on 
the imagination. If it is not true that "every- 
body says so," yet it is probable that everybody 
will say so when they have read the article. We 
have a comfortably gregarious feeling in being 
subjected to the same influence which moves so 
many of our fellow beings. It is pleasant to 
think that our minds synchronize with theirs. 
There is safety in numbers. 

It used to be said of the pulpit that it was the 
"coward's castle." The man who invented that 
phrase did not mean to bring a railing accusa- 
81 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

tion against the clergy. He did not say that the 
occupant of a pulpit was more apt to be a coward 
than other men. What he had in mind was 
the opportunity for defense. If a man hap- 
pened to be a coward, and at the same time 
wished to say unpleasant things about his neigh- 
bors, a pulpit seemed to be a safe place to say it 
from. People are accustomed to listen to the 
pulpiteer without answering back. 

But if a person is a real coward, a pulpit is not 
such a safe vantage-ground after all; for it stands 
in a very exposed position. Even if the congre- 
gation does not talk back, it has an excellent 
opportunity to look at the pulpiteer and size 
him up. This to a timid person is very discon- 
certing, as he stands behind a barricade which 
does not protect the most vulnerable part of 
his person, his tell-tale countenance. What avail 
his mighty words if his chin is weak and his eyes 
are shifty? With a hundred pairs of eyes di- 
rected upon him it requires a good deal of 
bravery to enable him to "carry on." 

The true coward's castle is the printed page. 
Here, secure from observation, free from prying 
eves, the writer may make his attacks without 
82 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

fear of reprisal. Nobody sees him in the act of 
composition, nobody knows what he looks like. 
Even if they know his name, his readers do not 
make any searching inquiry into his personal 
characteristics. When a strange voice is heard 
over the telephone, we inquire as politely as 
possible: "Who is speaking, please?" But when 
we take up a newspaper or magazine, we do not 
take the trouble to find out who is addressing us. 
Even with a book, unless it is by a very noted 
writer, we are incurious as to the personality 
behind the words. We think of the author as 
the eighteenth-century Deists thought of the 
Great First Cause. He is a logical necessity. He 
set things going, and then returns into the Un- 
known, where it would be a kind of sacrilege to 
attempt to follow him. His attributes are suf- 
ficiently, though vaguely, revealed through his 
works. 

The person with literary skill has the same 
kind of advantage which the Government has 
over private capitalists in being able to print 
money and force it into circulation. 

Dean Swift took a sardonic delight in an 
exhibit of this power. The almanac-maker 
S3 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

Partridge had made an honest living by pub- 
lishing an annual in which the events of the com- 
ing year were predicted with sufficient vague- 
ness to fit the circumstances as they might arise. 
Swift, under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff, 
set forth a rival almanac which should be 
more definite in its prognostications. Instead 
of prophesying in general terms, he put down 
the exact day of the month in which the death of 
Partridge the almanac-maker would take place. 
The day came, and Swift saw to it that on the 
morrow the announcement of the sad event 
appeared in all the London newspapers. At- 
tention was called to the fact that the death 
occurred in exact accordance with the Bicker- 
staffian chronology. Of course, Partridge was 
annoyed and attempted to set himself right. 
But Bickerstaff was the better writer and had 
caught the public eye. His cause was presented 
with such fullness of detail that there was no 
resisting it. Against the mass of documentary 
evidence the unsupported word of one man who 
was evidently prejudiced in his own behalf could 
not avail. Poor Partridge might gain credence 
among the few people to whom he could exhibit 

84 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

himself in the flesh, but the reading public pre- 
ferred the printing obituary. 

I had occasion recently to observe the help- 
lessness of those who attempt to contend against 
a first-rate literary tradition. For several years 
the nineteenth of April has, in the vicinity of 
Boston, been celebrated in dramatic fashion by 
reproducing the historic ride of Paul Revere. It 
happens that the historic route does not go 
through Cambridge, so this year our citizens 
arranged a rival, or rather supplementary, cele- 
bration. It seems that Paul Revere was not the 
only patriot who rode forth on that fateful 
night in 1775 to warn the farmers of Middlesex 
County, Massachusetts. One William Dawes 
galloped on the same errand and, as good luck 
would have it, took the road that led past the 
college at Harvard Square. So this year a citi- 
zen impersonating William Dawes rode through 
Cambridge, and the mayor and local dignitaries 
gathered to see him do it. But alas, the public 
imagination was not stirred. William Dawes was 
not a name to conjure with. Every school child 
resented the substitition. It would be in vain 
to say, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear 
85 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

of the midnight ride of William Dawes." They 
would not listen to what seemed a contradiction 
to what they had read. 

Our most familiar experience teaches us how 
our contacts with nature are interpreted by 
what we have read. The amateur gardener 
never tires of calling attention to the fact that 
the vegetables he raises taste differently from 
those he buys in the market. He attributes this 
to the circumstance that they come to the table 
in a fresher condition. But do they? 

I suspect that the indescribable something 
which he enjoys is derived largely from literary 
associations. While the ground was yet frozen, 
he had gloated over the pages of a seed-cata- 
logue, and his mouth had watered over the de- 
lectable fruits which were there described. In 
imagination he saw his future garden "without 
spot or blemish or any such thing." There he 
saw radishes and super-radishes, not tough and 
stringy, but with the dew of their youth yet 
upon them. There were, on each side of the 
garden walk, twelve manner of peas, some 
dwarf and some of gigantic growth, but each 
excelling the other in earliness and deliciousness. 

86 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

There were dwarf-giants combining the excel- 
lencies of dwarfishness and gianthood in a man- 
ner wonderful to relate. Each dwarf bore pods 
so full and heavy that a giant might be proud 
to lift them. The cauliflowers never refused to 
head; the lettuce never exhibited signs of pre- 
mature senility; the cucumbers were all beauti- 
ful within. All the tomatoes were smooth and 
of a ruddy countenance, solid of flesh and won- 
derfully prolific. Even the modest spinach 
merited the adjective "superb," which was 
freely given it. The pole-beans were veritable 
sky-scrapers of the vegetable world. 

When the literate gardener had read all this 
he straightway bought the little packets of seed 
which contained these marvelous potentialities. 
This done, he considered his work half accom- 
plished, for had he not read that the secret of 
success is in buying the right kind of seed from 
thoroughly reliable dealers? The rest is a mere 
detail. 

When in midsummer he invites you to par- 
take of vegetables that not only are the fruit of 
toil, but come as the fulfillment of early dreams, 
you should be in a sympathetic mood. He has a 
87 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

satisfaction unknown to one who has not read 
the seed-catalogue. His palate has been trained 
by long anticipation to taste that of which it has 
had a literary foretaste. Accidents may have 
happened not set down in the books, but the 
essentials are there. All that the garden aspired 
to be, and is not, comforts him. He welcomes 
to his table the wizened survivors of the cam- 
paign against insect enemies and an unusual 
season. They have been traveling through an 
unfriendly world, but they have arrived. How 
many comrades they have left behind them on 
the field, he does not inquire. It is not a time for 
retrospection. Any appearance of meagerness 
is overlooked. He sees upon the table the sym- 
bols of the marvelous prodigality of nature. The 
consideration which gives mystical significance 
to this feast of first fruits is that he is now ac- 
tually eating the vegetables he has read about. 

In regard to what lies outside the field of our 
personal experience the power of literary sug- 
gestion has no natural check. We generalize 
more easily from what we have read than from 
what we have tested by our own senses. We 
have fixed ideas as to what happened in distant 
88 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

times and places, and we spend little time in 
inquiring as to the source of our opinions. In 
general we accept the authority of the books we 
have read without inquiring in regard to the 
personal bias of the writer. Suppose we were to 
put the ideas of the docile reader in the form of 
a catechism. 

Question. At what time was society in the 
Roman Empire most corrupt? 

Answer. In the age of Juvenal. 

Question. When was the life of the lower 
classes in London most picturesque and amusing? 

Answer. In the time of Charles Dickens. 

Question. At what precise period were the 
manners of Americans at the lowest ebb ? 

Answer. At the time when Dickens wrote his 
"American Notes." 

Question. When did they begin to improve? 

Answer. About the time when James Bryce 
published the "American Commonwealth." 

Question. When did the English Puritans lose 
their original sincerity and become canting 
hypocrites ? 

Answer. When Samuel Butler wrote "Hu- 
dibras." 

89 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

Question. Who was the most brilliant sov- 
ereign of England ? 

Answer. Queen Elizabeth. 

Question. How do you prove this? 

Answer. From the writings of the brilliant 
Elizabethans. 

Question. When was Spain a happy country, 
and all classes of people easily moved to laughter? 

Answer. In the age of Cervantes. 

Question. When did England most deserve to 
be called "Merry England"? 

Answer. In the age of Chaucer. 

Question. When did the Scotch peasant lose 
his dourness and become genial? 

Answer. In the days of Robert Burns. 

Question. When was French family life most 
sordid and mean? 

Answer. In the days of Zola. 

Question. What historical period is indicated 
by the term "Ages of Faith"? 

Answer. The period during which the only liter- 
ature which has survived was written by monks. 

Question. Who was the most influential 
preacher of the early church — Paul or Apollos ? 

Answer. Paul. 

90 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

Question. What makes you think so? 

Answer. Because Paul wrote letters which 
have been preserved, while Apollos probably 
preached without notes. 

The moment we stop to analyze our im- 
pressions of the events of the past, or the per- 
sonages of human history, we realize how de- 
pendent we are on the literary medium through 
which our ideas are obtained. The merest liter- 
ary accident — the 'preservation or the loss of a 
scrap of paper — may make or mar the greatest 
reputation. 

An illusion to which the reader is subject 
arises from the selective nature of all literary 
art. The writer, even when he thinks he is most 
realistic, is compelled to choose both his subject 
and his way of treating it. This means that he 
must ruthlessly reject all phases of reality which 
are irrelevant to his purpose. He is a creator 
making a new world, and all that cannot be re- 
moulded by his intelligence is to him but a part 
of the primal chaos. That which to him is un- 
intelligible is treated as if it were non-existent. 
On the other hand, that which interests him is 
exhibited as if it were the only reality. 
91 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

When the reader is literal-minded and of a 
too docile disposition, he accepts the writer's 
representation of the world at its face-value. It 
is a very crowded little world, and full of terri- 
fying objects; and the reader has moods of de- 
pression unknown to his illiterate brethren, who, 
however hard their lot, are accustomed to take 
one trouble at a time. 

In the old-fashioned geography book there 
was a full page devoted to a pictorial view of 
the animal life of the Western Hemisphere. It 
was a terrifying collection of wild beasts and 
birds. Wild cats, jaguars, lynxes, and alligators, 
grizzly bears, polar bears, rattlesnakes, eagles, 
and condors abounded. They were all visible at 
the same time, and each creature was exhibited 
in its most threatening attitude. The Western 
Hemisphere was evidently a perilous place for a 
small boy. Even if armed with a shot-gun, he 
had a small chance for his life; for if one wild 
beast did not eat him up, another would. As for 
the Eastern Hemisphere, that was no safer, for 
it was crowded with lions, elephants, tigers, 
leopards, and orang-outangs. 

The anxieties of the small boy might have 
92 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

been allayed by the consideration that the 
Western Hemisphere was larger in reality than 
might be imagined from the wood-cut. There 
were great spaces between the wild beasts. One 
did not encounter them all at once. In that part 
of the hemisphere that is infested by polar bears 
there is immunity from alligators. A person may 
travel over wide stretches of country where the 
only specimen of wild life might be an inquisitive 
chipmunk. The dangers are so diluted by the 
distances as to be almost negligible to any one 
who does not insist on traveling all the time. 

The literate person needs to be continually 
reminded that the things he is reading about do 
not all happen to the same people or in the 
same place. The risks are well distributed. Nor 
need he think that the things he reads about are 
the most important, either in themselves or in 
their effects. 

It is in his ability to concentrate the report of 
a large number of facts of the same kind into a 
small space, and then fix the reader's attention 
upon them, that the writer has his strategic ad- 
vantage. He can with a really inferior force 
produce the impression of overwhelming power. 
93 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

It is a repetition of the military tactics of Gid- 
eon. The resourceful Israelite, by the use of 
trumpets and pitchers, was able with three 
hundred men to put to flight the Midianites 
and Amalekites whose army "lay along the 
valley like locusts for multitude, and their 
camels were without number as the sands upon 
the seashore for multitude." 

There was perhaps not a single able-bodied 
Amalekite who would have been scared if 
Gideon had appeared before him in broad day- 
light and broken a pitcher and blown ever so 
loudly with his trumpet. But when all the 
Amalekites heard a loud sound at the same time, 
they frightened each other terribly. "And when 
they heard the shout, 'The Sword of the Lord 
and of Gideon,' they fled as far as Beth-Shittah 
toward Zererath, as far as the border of Abel- 
meholah, by Tabbath." Gideon and his three 
hundred, "faint but pursuing," had really 
nothing to do after he had started the stam- 
pede. 

Among illiterates the mob-spirit is something 
fierce, cruel, irrational, but it is apt to be short- 
lived. Something happens that arouses the 

94 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

passions of anger and fear, and a victim is found. 
The mob tears him to pieces and then dis- 
perses. 

But among literates the mob-spirit may be 
preserved for generations, sometimes smoulder- 
ing but always liable to be fanned into a flame. 
A hatred preserved in print and multiplied 
through literary art assumes the dignity of a 
first principle and the force of an instinct. 

Anti-Semitism is of this nature. When one 
attempts to analyze it, he becomes conscious 
that he is not dealing with the modern Jew, but 
with an almost endless array of literary allusions. 
There are taunts that have become classic. The 
Irish Question is similarly complicated. So 
much has been written about it during the last 
five hundred years that it seems unscholarly not 
to keep it up. Any amicable settlement would 
be at the mercy of the next literary revival. 

There are aversions that may last for thou- 
sands of years, and then be suddenly intensified. 
In Palestine to-day there must be thousands 
of persons who are descended from the an- 
cient inhabitants who dwelt in the land before 
Joshua descended upon it with his militant 

95 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

Israelites. Many of these are peaceful persons 
against whose conduct there is no reasonable 
complaint. But if they should reassume the 
name of Canaanites in their plea for the self- 
determination of nations, they would find the lit- 
erate world against them. A Canaanitish resto- 
ration would be stoutly resisted by all persons 
who have not forgotten their Sunday-School 
lessons. The old text "cursed by Canaan" 
would raise a vague feeling of revenge which 
might easily be mistaken for religion. 

The feuds and panics which have been largely 
confined to the reading classes seem to have 
very little to do with what is actually taking 
place at any given time. They represent the 
state of mind into which a company of imagina- 
tive young people can throw themselves when 
they sit around a dying fire and tell ghost-stories. 
Some dreadful thing has happened in the past. 
Long after the danger is over, the story can be 
told so as to produce a tremor. 

The Spanish Inquisition, the religious perse- 
cutions in the Netherlands, the martyr-fires of 
Smithfield, the descent of the Armada, were real 
facts of the sixteenth century. But this period 

96 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

came to an end. Men's minds turned to new 
issues, and priestcraft lost its power. 

But for two centuries in England innumerable 
pamphlets were printed by alarmists who were 
righting the old battles of the sixteenth century 
over again. The literate mob was continually 
inflamed by stories of Jesuit plots. Every one 
who was not in good and regular standing in the 
Church of England was subject to suspicion. 
Richard Baxter, author of the "Saint's Ever- 
lasting Rest," had to deny the charge of a secret 
leaning toward the Scarlet Woman. William 
Penn, on returning from Philadelphia, found 
himself described as a Jesuit in disguise, who had 
been educated in the college of St. Omer in 
France and who had celebrated mass in the 
palace of St. James. To be sure, William Penn 
did not look like a Jesuit or talk like a Jesuit, but 
that only proved the completeness of his dis- 
guise. In the next century John Wesley had the 
same charge hurled against him. What more 
subtle way of advancing the Catholic conquest 
of Britain could be devised than to entice the 
working-people of England into Methodist 
meeting-houses. King James I, uniting two 
97 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

prejudices in one, coined the term "Papist- 
Puritan." In its comprehensiveness it reminds 
one of the way in which many people in our day 
are able to think of anarchists and socialists as 
members of the same party. 

The Reign of Terror in France had a similar 
effect upon the imagination of the reading pub- 
lic in England and America. For a whole gener- 
ation the press told of the ferocious Jacobins 
who were about to set up the guillotine in Lon- 
don and Philadelphia. Who were the Anglo- 
Saxon Jacobins? Joseph Priestly, man of science 
and scholarly minister, was one. Home Tooke, 
the eccentric scholar who advocated parlia- 
mentary reform, was another. He was put on 
trial for his life and barely escaped the gallows. 
In America the most feared of all Jacobins was 
Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. 

At a later period the literate mob had a 
classical revival. When General Grant was pro- 
posed for a second term as President of the 
United States, the cry of "Caesarism" was 
raised. There was something in it that brought 
back lessons learned in early youth. Everybody 
knew about Caesar. The analogy between past 
98 






THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

and present was obvious to the humblest under- 
standing: indeed, the humbler the understand- 
ing, the more satisfactory it was. Caesar was a 
great general, so was Grant. Caesar, after the 
Civil War, went into politics, so did Grant. 
Both men attained the highest honors within 
the gift of the people. Then Caesar destroyed the 
Republic. Could any one doubt that Grant 
would do the same? 

After an interval historic doubts are tolerated. 
We are able to see that William Penn was not a 
Jesuit, and Thomas Jefferson was not a Jacobin, 
and Ulysses Simpson Grant was not a reincarna- 
tion of Julius Caesar. But when at the breakfast- 
table we read of a strike in a Massachusetts tex- 
tile factory, of a convention of Western farmers 
who are organizing against their enemies the 
middlemen, and of the remarks of a teacher in 
the public schools whose opinions are more rad- 
ical than ou^s, it is quite natural to connect 
them all together, and think of them as manifes- 
tations of Russian Bolshevism.' Things which 
appear under the same headlines must have 
some sinister connection, though we may not 
know what it is. 

99 



THE PERILS OF THE LITERATE 

In calling attention to some of the perils of 
the literate, I do not mean to discourage the 
reading habit. Indeed, the persons who are 
most superstitious in regard to printed matter 
are those who have most recently crossed the 
boundary line from illiteracy. On the other 
hand, some of the most level-headed people I 
have known have been constant and even 
omnivorous readers. But I have noticed that 
they have always used their own minds when 
they were reading. 



NATURAL ENEMIES AND HOW TO 
MAKE THE BEST OF THEM 

The orator was just about to make his point, 
and it was a good one. For a quarter of an hour 
he had been leading up to it. He had begun in a 
lighter vein, and made friends with his audience. 
They knew by this time that he was no high- 
brow, no partisan, no Pharisee. He was one of 
them and was expressing their sentiments. All 
the inhibitions were withdrawn and they were 
ready to follow him when he gave the word. 
In one ringing devil-may-care sentence he would 
express their thought and his own. Then look 
out for the roof of the house. 

But just as the orator was approaching his 
climax his eye fell upon the gentlemen of the 
press. They also had the fire of professional 
expectancy in their eyes. They knew from long 
experience that something was coming. Their 
pencils were ready for the unexpected and in- 
evitable word. But the word did not come. 

Such a change came over the orator as might 
101 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

come over an Indian warrior when, just as he is 
about to bring down a deer, he sees the shadow of 
an hereditary foe who is crouching among the 
rocks. The tables are turned. He is no longer 
the hunter. He is the hunted, and all his facul- 
ties are absorbed in the instant work of self- 
preservation. 

The orator has had long practice in his art 
and knows that he must not manifest the fear he 
feels. So he expands his chest, and assumes a 
threatening aspect as he hurls forth a torrent of 
commonplaces. His one aim is to say as loudly 
as possible something which nobody would be 
likely to remember and repeat to his disadvan- 
tage. 

What has caused the trouble? The orator has 
espied his natural enemy, the reporter, and has 
realized an imminent danger. It is not that the 
reporter is unfriendly, but only that he is a re- 
porter. 

The orator had his audience with him. They 
understood what he was driving at. When he 
made his point there would be uproarious ap- 
plause. But now, as he catches sight of the 
reporter, he sees his magic sentence in print, 
102 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

with a headline drawing attention to its enor- 
mity. He sees it standing stark and dreary as if 
on a pillory. There is no pleasant introduction, 
no alleviating circumstance. Instantly he sees 
that what he was about to say, while it might 
sound well, would not read well. Indeed, it 
would read very badly and be a comfort to his 
enemies and a disaster to his friends. When it 
came out in print, he would have to explain that 
sentence, and the public looks upon explana- 
tions as evasions. 

The feud between the orator and the jour- 
nalist arises out of the very nature of their call- 
ings. The orator is the man of thrilling moments. 
His whole soul flashes in an instant and kindles 
emotions in those who hear. If he persuades he 
must do it at once. The exchange of ideas must 
be instantaneous. He is ruined if he overstays 
his market. 

The ancient orator could let himself go and 
carry his audience with him. When Demosthe- 
nes thundered against Philip he was addressing 
the men of Athens, and he could gauge with his 
eye the effect which he produced. He did not 
have to consider how it would appear when re- 
103 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

printed in the Pro-Macedonian press. But the 
American candidate when he is addressing the 
miners in Butte must consider how next morning 
it will impress the voters in Calais, Maine. It 
might be wise to tone down a sentence which 
would certainly be misapprehended in Orlando, 
Florida. The orator who faces a howling mob 
with magnificent courage and conquers its fierce 
passion, is stage-struck when he thinks of the un- 
seen multitudes whom he is addressing. He has 
n't a fair chance at them and he knows it. He is 
at the mercy of those who report him. 

This is an example of those persistent pro- 
fessional antagonisms which belong to civilized 
life, and which are pitfalls on the way of the inno- 
cent lover of peace. Not only is one man's meat 
another man's poison, but one man's way of 
making an honest living is often an interference 
with another man's livelihood. 

All this reminds us of the doctrine of class 
warfare resulting from the law of economic de- 
terminism. 

There are optimistic economists who meet 

the Marxian with a flat contradiction. There is 

no necessary class conflict they say. Mankind is 

104 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

a happy family if it only knew it. The interests 
of rich and poor, capitalist and laborer, are iden- 
tical. By a blessed law of nature we share in the 
total product of toil, if not every man according 
to his needs, at least every man according to his 
ability, which is a satisfactory arrangement for 
the able who are the only ones who really count. 

I confess that I am not quite satisfied with 
this doctrine of compensation, and I do not 
think that it works automatically to bring about 
substantial justice. It does not even work in the 
interest of increased ability, except of a certain 
kind. 

I should prefer to start with Marx and admit 
his idea of a class conflict. The conflict is not 
imaginary but real. But instead of being con- 
fined to the conflict between two such obvious 
classes as the rich and the poor, or the employers 
and the employed, it extends to all the divisions 
and subdivisions of human society. 

Instead of thinking of our various interests 
as originally identical, and then blaming every- 
body for the stupidity of not recognizing it, I 
find it more comforting and more reasonable to 
start with the assumption of original diversity 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

and antagonism of interests. The progress of 
civilization, then, consists in the invention of 
ways by which their antagonism can be over- 
come and cooperation be rendered possible. In- 
stead of looking at ourselves as degenerate Uto- 
pians, I think it is better to look at ourselves as 
Reformed Ishmaelites. Originally our hand was 
against every man and every man's hand was 
against us, but the fierceness of this class con- 
flict has been gradually abating, and we are 
learning to lend a hand to many of our natural 
enemies. Many classes which at one time had 
war to the knife now manage to live together in 
comparative amity. 

There was the bloody class warfare between 
the shepherd and the agriculturist. It appears 
in the most ancient tradition as something 
inherently irreconcilable. "And Abel was a 
keeper of sheep and Cain was a tiller of the 
ground." When Abel's sheep got into Cain's 
field the trouble began. It was easy for this 
economic conflict to take on an acutely religious 
character. When Abel insisted that his sacri- 
fice of "the firstlings of the flock and the fat 
thereof" was more acceptable to Deity than 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

Cain's simple offering of fruit and grain, it was 
no wonder that "Cain was very wroth and his 
countenance fell." Class warfare had developed 
into the deadly hostility of rival cults. There 
seemed to be only one way out, either Abel must 
kill Cain or Cain would kill Abel. 

The class warfare between hunters and shep- 
herds was equally unrelenting. Esau and Jacob 
quarreled continually. The countryside was not 
wide enough for their divergent activities. 

These ancient feuds have subsisted because 
they arose from a real conflict of interests. The 
history of the American frontier is full of bloody 
episodes in which Cain and Abel fought over the 
same old question. There has been no formal 
solution of their problem, though there has been 
a growing preference for a more peaceable ap- 
proach to it. During the ages the opinion of 
mankind has been slowly swinging around to 
the conclusion that Cain's method of settling 
the question by direct action is inadmissible. 
One man may raise sheep, another man may 
raise wheat. It is obvious that they cannot do it 
at the same time and on the same ground. They 
must compromise. 

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NATURAL ENEMIES 

Various laws have been devised by which the 
conflicts between the rival interests are reduced 
to a minimum. If Cain and Abel obey these 
regulations there is no reason why each may not 
be reasonably prosperous; they may even meet 
as friends. If they refuse to adhere to these 
regulations and insist on fighting out the feud in 
the crude old way, they are firmly dealt with as 
enemies of society. 

The ancient feud between the buyer and the 
seller has had the same general history. Once the 
functions of the merchant and the pirate were 
indistinguishable. When the swift ships of the 
Grecian traders outmaneuvered the Tyrians on 
the Mediterranean there was very little distinc- 
tion made between war and commerce; the object 
of both was booty. The successful trade was one 
in which the enemy was badly beaten and his 
spoil left in the hands of the victor. It would be 
rank Phariseeism to say that we have reached 
a point of vast superiority from which we can 
look down upon the custom of the ancients. It 
is still true as the Hebrew proverb reminds us 
that sin finds a particularly easy lodgment be- 
tween buying and selling. Nevertheless it is 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

true that the animosity between these two 
classes is, in normal times, greatly abated. 
Though they may still look at each other with 
suspicion, they recognize that they have com- 
mon interests. A good bargain may be one that 
is good for both parties to the transaction. 

Among the natural enemies whose animosi- 
ties are skillfully concealed or politely ignored is 
that between teachers and parents. To the un- 
willing schoolboy these two classes seem to be 
closely confederated in a conspiracy in restraint 
of his natural right to the pursuit of happiness. 
When he sees them with their heads close to- 
gether discussing his fate he imagines that 
they have a complete understanding with one 
another. As a matter of fact they are as divided 
in opinion as if they were members of the Peace 
Council. 

Did you ever hear a teacher say a good word 
for the parent as such. With particular mem- 
bers of that despised order he might be on terms 
of amity and even of intimate affection, but for 
the class as a whole he has nothing but condem- 
nation. It is painfully backward, and its educa- 
tional influence is pernicious. He himself stands, 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

as the saying is, "in loco parentis"; that is, in 
the place of the parent who was notoriously 
unfit for the position. He has a natural scorn for 
the inefficiency of his dispossessed rival. 

The great advantage of the boarding-school is 
that it takes the callow youth, in his most sus- 
ceptible years, away from the enervating pa- 
rental influence. Here there is some chance of 
making a man of him. But I have heard head 
masters lament bitterly the tendency of parents 
to intrude at the most unwelcome times. Just 
as the educational process was at its most in- 
teresting and critical stage there would be a 
disastrous visit prompted by affectionate curi- 
osity to see how it was getting on. One would 
imagine that the parent was the arch tempter 
creeping into the well-guarded paradise to tempt 
the innocent inhabitant not to eat of the tree 
of knowledge. The most disparaging stories are 
told of these intruders. If I had not known 
some members of the class who were of normal 
intelligence, I should think of them all as defec- 
tives for whom some reformatory work should 
be begun at once. 

On the other hand, one cannot frequent the 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

society of parents without being conscious of 
veiled hostility mingled with fear. The parent 
is usually less clear and interesting in his com- 
ments. His remarks partake more of the queru- 
lousness of those who are conscious of their own 
inferiority. But they agree that their children 
have talents which have not been sufficiently 
developed. The school while excellent in its 
way, is not adapted to the more unusual and 
sensitive pupil. 

A curious feud is that between the successful 
business man and the professor. I do not think 
it extends to the humbler members of the two 
classes. The struggling shopkeeper has a respect 
for the professor which is unmixed with envy. 
On the other hand, the business man has noth- 
ing to say against the ordinary teacher, who is 
looked upon as a very necessary person. 

But the college professor is looked upon with 
suspicion when he ventures to take part in 
public affairs. Have you never been at a meeting 
when a member of this class expressed his views I 
He was followed by a speaker who announced 
himself to be a plain business man. His plain- 
ness and his business likeness were defiantly 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

emphasized in every word and gesture. He 
wished to make every one understand that he 
had nothing in common with the erudite person 
to whom they had been listening. When he 
repeated at intervals the phrase, "As the pro- 
fessor said, " every one responded to the irony of 
his tone. 

Why should it be considered amusing to twit 
a man for being a professor any more than for 
being a carriage-maker or a wholesale grocery- 
man? Why should he be supposed to take an 
unrealistic view of a particular subject just be- 
cause he knows enough about it to teach it to 
others ? 

The source of the prejudice may lie in the 
obscure region of youthful experience. The 
successful business man may have suffered 
indignities at the hand of schoolmasters which 
influence him without his own knowledge. But 
beyond all this is the fact that the professor is an 
intruder in the field which the practical man 
claims as his own. In these days the scholastic 
world is not a region shut off from contacts with 
business and politics. There is not a department 
of human activity which is not now studied and 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

expounded by the professor. He is the man who 
professes to know your job better than you do. 
Now if you have been doing your job to your 
own satisfaction, you do not like to have him 
come around making remarks and criticizing 
your methods. Even if he does not do this, you 
suspect him of wishing to do so, and you resent 
his appearance on the scene 

We have had as Secretary of Agriculture a 
gentleman who has been a professor in an agri- 
cultural college. One might suppose that the 
ability to hold such a position would be no dis- 
qualification for the post to which he was ap- 
pointed. But it appears that much antagonism 
has been aroused, and the demand is for a "dirt 
farmer." A complete knowledge of soils is not 
enough. One must dig in the dirt, not merely 
analyze it. 

As the dirt farmer feels to the Professor of 
Agriculture so does the banker feel toward the 
Professor of Political Economy and the practical 
politician toward the Professor of Government. 
It is the same attitude as that of the members of 
the Mothers' Club when the maiden teacher of 
the Home-Making School lectures to them on 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

the way to bring up children. There is the con- 
cealed animosity of the woman in the tenements 
who receives instruction in household economics 
from the emissary of the School of Philanthropy. 
1 So far as I have been able to observe, profes- 
sors are unusually modest persons. So far from 
flaunting their learning in the face of the com- 
munity, they carefully conceal it in ordinary 
conversation. The hostility to them arises from 
an apprehension that their theory may upset our 
practice. 

A somewhat different phase of this ancient 
feud is found in the church, between the regular 
clergymen and the revivalist. 

You have probably attended the services of 
that remarkable reviver of religion, Reverend 
Billy Sunday. The lurid denunciation of saloon- 
keepers and other obviously objectionable sin- 
ners you understood, and you also comprehended 
his attacks upon persons who trusted in mere 
morality. But you may have been puzzled by his 
onslaughts upon his friends and assistants — the 
clergy. 

Upon the platform are all the cooperating 

ministers of the city who are taking part in the 

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NATURAL ENEMIES 

work of grace. The eyes of the great multitude 
are upon them. Then the evangelist begins to 
berate them for their sins of omission. They are 
men who do not know their business; they do 
not really earn their salaries however small the 
salaries may be. They do not know how to 
preach; they are cold, lifeless, indifferent. Their 
manifest shortcomings are illustrated by anec- 
dotes which delight the vast congregation. Peo- 
ple who have been accustomed to go to church 
feel virtuous when they think what they have en- 
dured. The non-church-goer realizes how much 
dreariness he has escaped by delaying his con- 
version till the preachers have been stirred to 
more interesting and exciting methods of work. 

In the meantime the persons who are ex- 
coriated sit, if not in smiling ease, at least with 
the appearance of commendable humility. They 
even join in the laughter which is at their own 
expense. 

Do they like it ? Do they really intend to give 
up the slow, steady, unspectacular work by 
which they have been building up their churches, 
and copy the sensational methods of the evange- 
list? 

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NATURAL ENEMIES 

Not at all — at least not as a class. Come 
around in six months after the revival is over, 
and hear their remarks in the ministers' meeting.. 
The revivalist has had his say; they have co- 
operated as largely as possible. But now he is 
gone, and they remain. In the ministers' meeting 
they are quite willing to say to one another that 
they know their own business better than he 
did. 

When Whitefield came to Massachusetts, my 
predecessor, the Reverend Thomas Appleton, 
D.D., led the opposition, and refused to allow 
the eloquent intruder to enter the pulpit of the 
First Parish Church. He put the case in a ser- 
mon before the convention of Congregational 
ministers. He took for his text the words, "Ye 
are the salt of the earth, ye are the light of the 
world," and applied them to the parish minis- 
ters. Ye are the salt of the earth. Salt has two 
purposes : First, to preserve what otherwise would 
decay. The minister's function is to preserve 
ancient things. But he should remember, Sec- 
ond, salt as a seasoning to our food should be 
used discreetly. Religion is salt. The itinerant 
enthusiast is likely to overdo the matter and 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

make the spiritual food distasteful to the sober- 
minded. Ye are also the light of the world. In 
the Scriptures we are told of seven candles 
and seven candlesticks — one candle for each 
candlestick and no more. This is as it should be 
and conduces to order in the church. The minis- 
ter is the candle, the church is the candlestick. 
"Let no man jostle you out of your candlestick." 

Whitefield came and went. Taking his stand 
under a great elm in the Cambridge Common, 
near that under which Washington afterwards 
stood, he preached to more people than ever 
Appleton faced. But then Thomas Appleton 
ministered in a quiet and effective way to the 
people whom he knew for sixty years, and no 
man jostled him out of his candlestick. Which 
was the more successful? 

All through the Middle Ages there was the 
conflict between the regular clergy and the 
itinerant friars who were invading their parishes 
and incidentally criticizing their methods. In 
the choir of an English cathedral I was inter- 
ested in the carving on the stalls. Here was 
carved a fox preaching to a congregation of 

gaping geese. Did the artist offend the holy men 
n7 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

who sat in the stalls by his broad caricature? 
Not at all. He was expressing their sentiments 
with a humor they enjoyed. The fox was a 
friar of the order of Saint Francis, and the geese 
were the people who preferred his ministrations 
to those of the regular clergy. 

But the friar also was a servant of the Church 
and his work was sanctioned by the Holy Father? 
That might be, and the Holy Father doubtless 
had his own good reasons for tolerating that 
kind of a servant. Still the fact remains that he 
is not of our kind. 

Trollope's Vicar of Bullhampton was a kindly 
man tolerant of all kinds of sinners. But when 
the Methodist minister built his chapel opposite 
the vicarage gate it was a sore trial to his Chris- 
tianity. That anything so ugly could be for the 
glory of God it was difficult for him to believe. 
The structure was an affront. When good taste 
and religion unite in a decree of reprobation 
there is no room for arbitration. The only thing 
to do is to change the subject. 

There are antagonisms that develop when two 
professions which have fundamentally different 
aims and methods are, in the Biblical phrase, 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

"unequally yoked together." There was the 
ancient Guild of the Barber-Surgeons. I can- 
not think that even in its palmy days it ever 
worked well. It was based on a superficial 
analogy. The idea that the mere fact of blood- 
letting constituted a community of interest was 
fallacious. I imagine that from the beginning 
there was bickering in the guild. When a ton- 
sorial member of the twin professions developed 
a finer technique and advertised himself as a 
bloodless barber, it was looked upon as a reflec- 
tion upon those who were on the surgical side. 
When later on the surgeons began to look down 
on the barbers and made advances to the physi- 
cians, the rupture was complete. 

The physicians had been through the same 
kind of experience a long time before — indeed, 
so long before that they had largely forgotten it. 
The medical man was originally a medicine man. 
He was a kind of magician and had made great 
use of charms and amulets and the beating of 
tom-toms, and other methods of exorcising de- 
mons. When he began to think of himself as a 
man of science, he had to break with his old as- 
sociates and also to disappoint many of those 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

who most eagerly sought his help. He tried to 
avoid the conflict as long as he could and make 
a mystery of his art, but he finally had to make 
his choice. 

In the most genial and tolerant modern physi- 
cian you will see a sudden hardening of the coun- 
tenance when he speaks of a quack. And yet 
what is a quack? He is a survival of the ancient 
medicine man. He represents the pre-scientific 
profession. 

This form of class conflict is of the nature 
of civil war. There is usually no way out but 
through secession. When there is absolute in- 
compatibility both of temper and of methods 
divorce is the lesser evil. 

I fear that the class of college presidents will 
experience some of the difficulties of the barber- 
surgeons. It is just beginning to be class con- 
scious, and therefore unrestful. A generatioi 
ago the president was only a professor who ha< 
been promoted to the headship of the institutioi 
which he had faithfully served. He was prima- 
rily a scholar and could be trusted to look aftei 
the interests of his class. Now he is looked upoi 
as belonging to a different class. He is not onlj 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

a kind of educator, but a kind of money-raiser. 
He is the business manager of a huge corpora- 
tion, and a publicity man who must keep the 
institution in the public eye. If he is connected 
with a state university, he must also be a good 
politician. It is quite possible for a man to be all 
of these things, but such versatility is unusual. 
If a man is primarily an educator, it seems too 
much to ask that he should also be a business 
promoter. In the interest of peace and efficiency 
the functions should be differentiated. There is 
too much expected of the president-promoter. 

It is true that these divisions may be carried 
too far. People who are working on the same 
job often spend a great deal of time waiting for 
each other, which is bad for the temper. The 
plumbers and the carpenters manage to repress 
their impatience at each other's dilatoriness, but 
this comes from long practice. One learns to 
admire the good humor of the plumber who must 
lay down the tools of his own trade rather than 
take up those of another. With perfect resig- 
nation to class etiquette he awaits the arrival of 
the carpenter to drive a nail or saw a board. 
He could perform these simple operations as 
121 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

well himself if he were allowed to do so. But 
he seldom allows himself to be troubled by the 
delay. The same predicament is met less philo- 
sophically in the higher regions of politics. It is 
well known that any President is able and willing 
to negotiate a treaty. He takes it as a part of the 
day's work. But the Constitution ordains that 
he must do it with the advice and consent of the 
Senate. In instituting the two classes of adviser 
and advisee an ancient feud was revived. When 
did an advisee get on well with his adviser? 
Certainly the course of true love between the 
President and the Senate never did run smooth. 
The same thing can be said of the historic 
conflicts between our legislatures and our courts. 
We have one set of men to make our laws and 
another to tell what they mean. Naturally they 
do not like one another. The judicial interpreter 
is amazed at the legislator's capacity for using 
ambiguous language. Why cannot they tell what 
they mean? Or perhaps they have no meaning 
and so leave it to me to put some sense into it. 
It's their way of "passing the buck." Then he 
proceeds to apply the rule of reason to the stat- 
ute. The decision amounts to this. The words 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

may mean a great many different things as has 
been demonstrated by the learned members of 
the bar. But taking for granted that the legis- 
lators were wise and level-headed men who were 
well acquainted with the Constitution and 
deeply versed in the spirit of the laws, this is what 
we may assume that they meant their words 
to mean when applied to this particular case. 

Now the lawmaker who had in mind some- 
thing quite different looks upon the Justices of 
the Supreme Court as his adversaries. They rep- 
resent, not indeed "spiritual wickedness in high 
places," but spiritual righteousness in high 
places which is sometimes just as troublesome. 
They have a way of spoiling his best work. So it 
happens that whenever one of these dignitaries 
descends from his position to take part in poli- 
tics, he finds himself beset by powerful foes. 
If they can find nothing else against him they 
twit him with the fact that he has a "judicial 
mind." It is almost as bad as being called a 
professor. 

In the early days of the Republic this feud 
took a dramatic form. Jefferson and Marshall 
each had ardent adherents. It was only after a 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

bitter struggle that the judges gained their place 
of power as one of the governing classes. 

A different form of natural antipathy is that 
between the literary man and his neighbors. This 
does not extend to all writers and represents a 
different antagonism from that to which I called 
attention in my remarks on the "Perils of the 
Literate." A writer on abstract philosophy may 
live on terms of amity with his most illiterate 
neighbors. They find no harm in him, and 
treat his foibles with charity. Historians or es- 
sayists of the more discursive type are not looked 
upon with suspicion. But a novelist, especially 
of the realistic school, is persona non grata. 

It will be noticed that most novelists after 
their first success, in which they have used the 
home town for literary material, move away, thus 
escaping their most severe critics. 

I am conscious in myself of the suspicion of 
a novelist, though fortunately I have it only 
in a mild form. I should not object to his liv- 
ing in the same block with me, but I should be 
disquieted if he were to be for any length of time 
at the same table in a boarding-house. We do 
not like to be made game of, and to be made copy 
124 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

of is almost as bad. Under his keen, analytic 
eye there would be no sense of privacy. Most of 
one's familiar acts and sayings are of no conse- 
quence whatever. We resent having some one 
around who specializes on such unconsidered 
trifles and writes them up. If there is anything 
that is strictly our own it is our idiosyncrasies. 
To have them made public property causes 
irritation. The writer has an unfair advantage 
of us. 

This prejudice extends even to poets when 
they cease to journey in the realms of gold and 
settle down in one place and attempt to de- 
scribe it. The more descriptive they are and 
the more local in their allusions, the less they are 
liked; that is, if they get the reputation of being 
superior persons. 

An ardent Wordsworthian wished to know 
what his old neighbors in the Lake Country 
thought of the poet. Interviewing an old dales- 
man he asked him whether Wordsworth had 
many friends among the shepherds. 

"Naay, naay, he cared nowt about folk, nor 
sheep, nor dogs; he only cared about po'try." 

"But he was a great walker, was he not?" 
125 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

"Aye, he was a gay good walker, but he was 
never a mountain man. That Wordsworth was 
not loveable in the face. He was not a man folks 
could crack at, nor a man as could crack at 
folks. He was a distant man, though well spoke 
of for his po'try. He was fond of goin' out with 
his family, and sayin' nowt to none of 'em. 
Many a time I've seen him takin' his family out 
in a string and never sayin' a thing, but walkin' 
by himself, with his jaws workin' the whole 
time, but never no crackin' with 'em nor no 
pleasure in 'em. A desolate-minded man was 
that Wordsworth." 

Life in the Lake District as Wordsworth saw 
it was not at all like life as the old shepherd saw 
it. And Wordsworth, just because he had the 
uncanny gift of "po'try," had caught the public 
eye and ear. All one could do was to grumble 
over the misrepresentation of plain facts. 

I suppose that Wordsworth's pedler, could 
he have been interviewed, would have made 
many sarcastic remarks about the account given 
of him in the "Excursion." 

As for Chaucer I doubt whether he was ever 
invited to go on a pilgrimage after the publica- 
126 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

tion of the "Canterbury Tales." For there were 
people in those days who took their pilgrimages 
very seriously, and when they returned home 
wished their neighbors to be impressed by the 
austerities they had undergone. It would never 
do to have a light-minded literary man in the 
company who would report in such a way as to 
give the impression that they had been off on a 
pleasure trip. 

To the college student the gathering of the 
professors of the various arts and sciences in 
one faculty seems perfectly natural. These 
learned men seem to him equally venerable, and 
the differences between them seem negligible. 
As a matter of fact a university represents as 
remarkable an aggregation of natural enemies 
as a menagerie. As long as each animal is in his 
cage he is harmless, but let him get into the 
neighboring cage and trouble begins. 

The learned professor of the Old Testament 
remembers the havoc which geologists made 
when they were let loose in his field. Anthropol- 
ogists are all the time destroying the conclusions 
of the classicists. Psychologists, red in tooth 
127 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

and claw, are ready to rend in pieces the absent- 
minded philosopher who wanders among them. 
Chemists and physicists overturn each other's 
theories and contend for the territory that lies 
between them. The grammarian growls over his 
bone which the saucy student of folklore tries 
to snatch from him. Once these antagonisms led 
to physical combats, but now they are moderated 
by other considerations. 

Sometimes among the well-bred scholars the 
antipathies are expressed only by an intonation 
or by a charm phrase. I remember hearing a 
great engineer speak in praise of his profession. 
Quite incidentally he spoke of architecture as 
"the millinery of engineering." 

Dean Inge, in a lecture in criticism of the 
ordinary belief in progress, declared dogmati- 
cally, "the historian is a snob." He was allud- 
ing, not to any particular historian, but to the 
class. It was a hard saying, and yet from the 
standpoint of the historian's natural enemy, the 
teacher of pure ethics, there is much to be said in 
behalf of the accusation. 

The historian is always telling anecdotes of 
people who have made a name for themselves 
128 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

and who have been, so to speak, "in the swim." 
He manages to make us aware of his acquaint- 
ance with famous personages. There does seem 
something snobbish in this preference for nota- 
bilities, and his neglect of those who have not 
arrived. But if the historian is called a snob, he 
may retort by calling the professional moralist 
a prig. 

All this sounds very dreadful, and one might 
imagine that the class conflicts in a modern 
University would destroy personal friendship. 
On the contrary, a finer kind of friendship 
thrives on it. Men of antagonistic views, whose 
methods are opposed, meet on a common ground 
and come to like each other. What is more they 
learn to profit by each other's criticisms. They 
utilize natural enmities to produce a finer co- 
operation. 

This is what we are trying to do everywhere, 
not to bring about uniformity, but to make the 
best use of natural diversities. The thought that 
it is our duty to exterminate our enemies is so 
simple that it appeals to every unsophisticated 
mind. It seems to do away with all difficulties in 
one swoop. The idea that we cannot extermi- 
129 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

nate all our natural enemies, and that we would 
be worse off if we did, comes slowly. We learn 
all sorts of accommodations and compromises 
by which former foes are gradually transformed 
into members of a more or less cooperative com- 
monwealth. 

The problem is not, How many people of the 
same kind can live in the same territory? It is 
not as simple as that. We must ask, How many 
kinds of people who have quite different tastes 
and ambitions can exist upon a given territory 
without feeling the necessity of exterminating 
one another? How many varieties of human 
nature can be tolerated? 

This question of toleration depends on our 
ability to come to a rational understanding with 
persons who are quite different from ourselves, 
and who frankly confess that they are proud 
of the differences. Having acknowledged that 
theoretically they have as much right to be here 
as we have, we must work out practicable ways 
for the joint use of the world. 

When Saint Francis of Assisi made peace with 
the Wolf of Gubbio he had first a friendly talk 
with that ferocious animal and convinced him of 
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NATURAL ENEMIES 

the folly of his predatory ways. After that he 
convinced the people of Gubbio that it was to 
their interest to furnish the wolf with sufficient 
food to allow him to maintain a peaceful exist- 
ence. That was all there was of it. The wolf 
and the villagers became fast friends. 

That which impresses us in the story is not 
the saintliness or wisdom of Francis, but the 
rationality of the wolf. That constituted the 
miracle. There is plenty of room in the world 
for all kinds of creatures if they would all adopt 
the motto, "Live and let live." But it takes more 
intelligence than most creatures have to under- 
stand the ways and means of living and letting 
live. We have to invent ways of avoiding the 
direct clash of vital interests. 

As I write in my study at the edge of the 
woods I am conscious of the different uses to 
which the same territory may be put. A delight- 
ful little chipmunk is gazing at me from a chink 
between two rough stones which serve as a door- 
step. That is, I consider them as a doorstep, 
but for him they are the roof of a dwelling which 
he calls his own. There are two entrances which 
he freely uses. He is sitting now at the front door 
131 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

where he has a full view of my less snug and 
picturesque apartment. When I first came up 
in the early summer my presence made him 
nervous, but now he knows that I have no ul- 
terior designs. I am a harmless eccentric to be 
tolerated during good behavior. He looks at 
me without fear and without reproachfulness. 
The world is wide enough for us both. Live and 
let live is the law. 

But there is a rabbit who lives in the vicinity. 
I am sure that if wooed in the friendly spirit he 
would be ready to establish the same neighborly 
relations. When I first met him he seemed to be 
of an innocent and confiding disposition. But 
I cannot feel toward the rabbit as I do toward 
the chipmunk. It is not our differences, but our 
agreements, which make us enemies. What the 
chipmunk eats is no concern of mine. I gener- 
ously rejoice to think that he gets his food in due 
season. I do not envy his abundance. But the 
rabbit and I have the same vegetation tastes, 
and he is the earlier riser. When I go into the 
garden I have so painfully prepared in the clear- 
ing, he has been there before me. He has browsed 
upon my lettuce. If the rabbit would stay in the 
132 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

woods and not frequent the vegetable garden 
we would be fast friends. If he would come to 
my study door I would not molest him. I might 
even feed him with lettuce leaves that I did not 
need for my own family. 

If I were able to address the rabbit as Saint 
Francis reasoned with the Wolf of Gubbio, and 
he had the sweet reasonableness of the wolf, our 
difficulties could be easily adjusted. The con- 
flict of our real interests is absurdly small. 
There is plenty of room for both if only we under- 
stood each other and acted rationally. I should 
be willing to plant a little corner of the garden in 
vegetables for his delectation. A proper consid- 
eration for our respective rights would prevent 
all hostility. But how is the rabbit to be made 
aware of these fine possibilities ? He has a will to 
live; his intellect is not sufficient to direct that 
will amid the complexities produced by human 
neighborhood. 

Fortunately in dealing with conflicts of inter- 
est among human beings we have the advantage 
which came to Saint Francis only through a 
miracle. Those who have been most successful 
in bringing about an agreement have addressed 
133 



NATURAL ENEMIES 

those who were opposed to them as if they were 
rational beings. And it is surprising how rational 
most people turn out to be when they are ap- 
proached in that way. 






THE SPIRITUAL ADVISER 
OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

"What does that sign mean, Bagster?" 

"It means just what it says. I am a consult- 
ant. I've opened up an office in connection 
with my church where the efficiency experts can 
come for spiritual advice. I meet my clients only 
by appointment." 

It had been several years since I had seen my 
old friend Reverend Augustus Bagster. Some 
of my readers may remember that I once gave 
an account of some of his plans for improving 
his fellow-men. He at one time opened up an 
office in his church where he established a 
Bibliopathic Institute for the benefit of persons 
whose ailments could be cured by the right use 
of books. 

The war broke up this activity and he went 
to France, where' his services were invaluable. 
Since his return he had been busy in all sorts of 
welfare work. Now he had taken up his parish 
work with new enthusiasm. This evening he was 
135 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

in a talkative mood and went on for almost an 
hour with few interruptions from me. I will 
therefore allow him to tell his own story. 

"I expected that my church would have 
suffered a good deal during my absence, but 
I was surprised to find everything going on as 
usual. The usualness of the usual is very sur- 
prising after a person has for several years been 
experiencing the unusual. It comes as a shock. 
The old familiar routine is a nine-days' wonder. 

"Now that the nine days are over, and I am 
getting back into peace-time harness, I am 
starting some new activities. 

"There is one class that needs looking after. 
It is that which is composed of persons of expert 
knowledge who have been looking after other 
people. Now that many of these other people 
are looking after themselves, many efficient 
altruists are temporarily out of a job. Somebody 
ought to look after them. They have been ac- 
customed to get results, but they are a trifle 
mixed in their minds as to just what results are 
worth getting. 

"They used to be successful to a fault, but it 
136 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

never occurred to them to ask, Successful at 
what? Success was its own excuse for being. 
But it is n't so now. They are asking questions 
which have no easy answers attached to them, 
and they are trying to do things which are much 
more difficult than making money. These effi- 
cient people are the ones that most need cheer- 
ing up and straightening out; but they might well 
say no man careth for their souls. They have 
been educated to do one kind of work, but now 
they need a good deal of reeducation. 

"It is with these people in mind that I have 
established my office. It's a sort of Lost Articles 
Department. There are lost incentives and lost 
purposes which busy people are apt to overlook. 
There are lost values which are most distressing 
of all. A person is efficiently working for some- 
thing. He thinks he has got it, but finds that 
he has got something else. A mistake has been 
made, but he can't quite locate it. He comes to 
me to talk it over. I am not an expert myself. 
That's the reason he comes to me. I may sug- 
gest something which he would have thought of 
himself if his mind had n't been so full of other 
things. 

137 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

"One of my clients is a publicity man, one of 
the ablest in the country. He is a splendid fellow. 
He is a born booster, and is chockful of bright 
ideas. He can boost anything he turns his mind 
to. He can take a little business and turn it into 
a big business, just by arousing curiosity about 
it. He does n't misrepresent anything; he does 
n't need to. He admits that it is a little busi- 
ness; all he asks is that people should watch it 
grow. And it does grow because they are watch- 
ing it. It is the public interest that does it, and 
he knows how to keep the public interested. 
He's a master hand at getting unpaid publicity, 
and he says that it is unpaid publicity that pays. 

"He has always been very conscientious and 
will never undertake to push an article that has 
no merit in it. But he will take Modest Merit 
and dress it up and put it in the limelight, so 
that everybody will see its excellence. 

"He has been very successful, but now he is 
not content with making money. That is too 
sordid. He wants to apply his talents for the 
good of humanity. Lately he has taken up 
religion. It is a very genuine enthusiasm with 
him. He is convinced of the great need of vital 
138 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

piety in the present crisis in the affairs of the 
world. He is accustomed to divide mankind 
into two classes, the boosters and the kickers. 
There are too many kickers and not enough 
boosters. He is going to recruit the number of 
the boosters of religion. After looking into the 
ways of the churches he finds that they are not 
more than thirty-seven per cent efficient. 

"He has organized groups of active men and 
has been teaching them better ways of doing 
religious business. In this he has been very suc- 
cessful up to a certain point. 

"The other day, however, he came to me in 
considerable distress of mind. He was afraid he 
was getting stale. He had, he said, been making 
the same appeals and using the same illustra- 
tions, for he was a great believer in the power of 
repetition. He had seen it work well in every 
department of publicity work in which he had 
been engaged. That is the great use of a slogan. 
People repeat it and get used to it, and by and 
by their curiosity is aroused and they ask what 
it means. At least seventeen per cent do, and 
that means success when you are dealing with 
large numbers. 

139 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

"But something seemed to be slowing up his 
work and he asked me to attend his next con- 
ference with his workers and see what was the 
matter. 

"The next day after the meeting he called to 
get my report. 

"'What did you think of it?' he asked. 

" 'I think you meant well,' I answered. 

" ' Then you think I did n't get results ? Was I 
too unconventional for the church folks in my 
line of talk?' 

" ' No. You were too conventional. That was 
the trouble. I noticed that a good many people 
listened respectfully as if they had heard it be- 
fore. They listened too easily, as they do to 
Dr. Goodspeed when he reads a sermon taken out 
of his barrel.' 

"'But I had only spoken to them once or 
twice before.' 

" ' Yes, the first time was a great success. They 
saw that you were dead in earnest and that you 
were talking about a subject that you had never 
thought much about before. There was some- 
thing fresh in your method of approach. Instead 
of starting like Dr. Goodspeed with the Amale- 
140 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

kites and Perizzites and drawing a doubtful 
moral from their distant sins, you drew your 
illustrations from your own business. They were 
not very good illustrations, but they served 
your purpose, for every one saw what you were 
driving at. You said that you had been teaching 
men how to sell automobiles and dress goods. 
Now we ought to put as much energy and per- 
suasiveness into the work of bringing religion 
before the public. We have a good thing; we 
should push it. Then in a very natural and tell- 
ing way you said, "We are here to sell religion. 
Let me show you how to do it." 

'"That was all right when you said it the 
first time. But last night when you repeated 
briskly, "We are here to sell religion," I saw that 
you had lost your audience. You were falling 
into the conventionalities of the salesman, and 
were not speaking the language of the religious 
sentiment. You were doing what Dr. Good- 
speed so often does. You were running your 
illustration into the ground. It went into the 
ground with a dull thud. 

"'For the fact is that the analogy to sales-* 
manship breaks down almost at the start. The 
141 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

salesman has something which his customers 
have not, but which they need or can be made 
to think they need. He must make his goods 
attractive in order to get them off his hands. 

" 'But you do not want to get your religion off 
your hands. If you happen to be of a religious 
turn of mind you realize that you have n't any 
surplus for export, and that your neighbor is 
just as near to the source of supplies as you are. 
His religion is better for him than yours would 
be if it were dumped on his home market. All 
your attempts to recommend your wares are 
from the religious point of view an impertinence. 
Religion is something to be shared, it is not 
something to be sold. 

"'Did you realize that you were playing into 
the hands of the enemy when you tried to show 
that religion is the best way of safeguarding 
business interests and maintaining political 
stability? Do you remember Gibbon's remark, 
"All religions are to the vulgar alike true, to the 
philosopher alike false, and to the statesman 
alike useful " ? You don't believe that any more 
than I do, but your way of putting things might 
lead to the conclusion that you valued religion 
142 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

chiefly for its usefulness to the class to which you 
belong. 

"'The fact is that in the past religion has 
often manifested itself as a force that turns the 
world upside down, and it may do it again. The 
great religious teachers have never concealed 
this fact. They have not always presented it as 
an attractively safe investment. You remem- 
ber the young man who came prepared to buy 
religion if it could be shown to be a profitable 
venture, and who "went away very sorrowful, 
because he had great possessions." 

"'As to your argument addressed to the hard- 
headed business man to convince him that if he 
gives generously to foreign missions he will get 
his money back, because it is good for trade — 
I would cut that out. If he is really hard-headed 
he won't wait for such slow returns. He knows 
that he can turn his money over half a dozen 
times while the missionary is learning the lan- 
guage. He will let somebody else give to mis- 
sions while he takes a more direct way to the 
profits. 

'"If I wanted to be effective in persuading 
people to give to foreign missions I should tell 
143 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

the plain truth about the motive that sends the 
missionary out. It's because he believes in his 
mission. If you can get other people to believe 
in it they will be glad to help. But you can't 
do it by talking about something else, even if 
that something else is as interesting as foreign 
trade. There are, indeed, some people, as the 
New Testament tells us, who believe that "gain 
is godliness." But you can't do much with that 
kind of folks. I would n't waste time trying to 
conciliate them. Go after the people who know 
the difference. 

'"When you come to that point in your 
speech where you say, "And even if there were 
no higher motive it would be worth your while," 
etc., etc. — cut that out too. You have a higher 
motive. Stick to that! Why do you suggest a 
lower motive that is n't half so appealing. You 
lose spiritual momentum while you are chang- 
ing gears. Besides, the higher motive is reli- 
gious, and it is religion you are trying to "get 
across."' 

"My client is very quick and saw the point at 
once — and half a dozen other points I had not 
seen. Within five minutes he was outlining a 
144 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

plan to get the ideas that had just occurred to 
him before the public. 

"It is not always," continued Bagster, "that 
my clients are so open to suggestion. Sometimes 
they are very set in their own ways. The other 
day a gentleman called who was an expert in 
business management. He had been engaged by 
the trustees of a University to report on methods 
and to suggest economies. He had pleased them 
so much that they had given him authority to 
carry out his plans for reconstruction. 

" 'It is a chance,' he said, 'that does not come 
often to one in my profession. People come to 
me for advice, and then act only on so much of 
it as pleases them. When I took up this job I 
resolved to put it through in good shape. I over- 
hauled the educational machinery and scrapped 
everything that was not up-to-date. It 's the only 
true economy. 

"'I was astonished at the condition of things. 
There was no system. You could n't have run a 
cotton mill as that University was run, and I 
know what I am talking about, for I have had a 
great deal of experience in cotton mills. 
145 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

"'Take the matter of research for one thing. 
There is nothing more important. The Univer- 
sity owes it to the community to make a certain 
number of important discoveries every year. 
The Advancement of Science is expensive, but 
it pays in the long run. Certain members of the 
Faculty should always be put on these jobs when 
they are not needed at their routine work. It 
takes some planning to keep the advancing 
steady. 

"'But when I looked into it I found an utter 
lack of business method. Some of the most dis- 
tinguished researchers had very vague ideas as 
to what they were going to discover — and they 
had no idea of time whatever. A research that 
under any up-to-date administration ought to 
have been finished in thirty days would linger on 
for several years and then turn out to be some- 
thing quite different from what it was intended 
to be. 

"'I learned that the discoveries were generally 
haphazard affairs, often quite accidental. A 
great many hours were spent in fruitless specu- 
lation. 

"'And when they did make a profitable dis- 
146 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

covery the habit of procrastination kept them 
from making the best use of it. Anybody with 
business sense can see that the psychological 
moment for publishing a discovery is the 
moment when you make it. Then it has some 
news value. But these professors would let time 
slip away while they were engaged in tedious 
processes of verification. 

"'I had a plain talk with the men of the de- 
partment. I said, "We will no longer tolerate 
dilatory methods. You must make good or get 
out. Verification is all right, but it must not be 
allowed to interfere with publication. That, for 
the reputation of the University, must be on the 
minute. If it is n't our competitors will get away 
with us every time." 

"'I introduced a definite system throughout 
the University, aiming to arouse a spirit of 
proper pride in the professors, and making every 
one feel that he must earn his salary by showing 
results. I showed them the evil of unrelated 
intellectual activities. We want activities that 
build up the University and make it an institu- 
tion to which all good citizens can point with 
pride. It is team play we are after. 
147 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

"'The great thing I have insisted upon is 
standardization. That is the secret of big busi- 
ness. And Education is a big business if you look 
at it in the right way. I have tables prepared 
showing the exact cost of educating the Ameri- 
can boy, so that he shall be a thoroughly stand- 
ardized American citizen. Using our plant to its 
utmost capacity we ought to double our output 
and guarantee its uniformity. When the public 
recognizes our diploma as a reliable trademark 
we can count on its patronage. It's square 
dealing that wins. We don't want any crooked 
sticks, any men with unclassified opinions or un- 
usable talents in the Faculty. No man should 
publicly express an opinion that the University 
as a whole would not stand for. 

"'It is not only necessary to standardize the 
product, but also the methods of production. 
This is extremely difficult, but it is necessary 
if we are to have a high standard of efficiency. 
It is necessary to know just exactly what each 
man is capable of producing in a given length 
of time, and then we must hold him strictly 
responsible for his output. This is a fundamen- 
tal principle which I am hammering into the 
148 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

minds of our employees. I think they are be- 
ginning to cooperate. 

'"I have posted a notice in the Faculty 
room, giving all the principles of shop manage- 
ment that I have introduced into the institution. 

"'Each day's work shall be definitely allotted 
to each member of the Faculty, by the head of 
his department. 

"'An accurate time study is made by means 
of a stop-watch with record blanks to determine 
how fast the work should be done. 

'"At the end of each day each member will be 
informed as to whether he is keeping up with his 
task or how far he has fallen short. An assistant 
will be sent to encourage those who are falling 
behind and help them to catch up. 

"'In order to keep the professors at the maxi- 
mum production consistent with their own 
health there will be high pay in case the tasks 
are successfully done and low pay in case of par- 
tial failure. 

'"These rules I carefully explained to the 

members of the Faculty showing them that they 

were made in their interest. In order to further 

encourage them I announced that those who 

149 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

were successful in their teaching jobs would be 
transferred to the business end of the establish- 
ment. I believe this method is already adopted 
in many of our most successful institutions.' 

"At this point," said Bagster, "my client 
showed me a blank which he used. For the sake 
of economy he used one originally prepared 
for the shoveling department, but which, by a 
few slight changes made by the pen, served to 
check the work of the professors. [See page 151.] 

"Other tables were shown 'indicating time 
spent in getting ready to shovel,' and in ' return- 
ing empty'; also time spent in 'loosening clay 
which was about to be shoveled.' The analogies 
to the educational process were so exact that 
the percentages worked out perfectly. Of course 
allowance was made for the time difference be- 
tween shoveling clay and transferring a definite 
amount of knowledge from one mind to another. 

"'If,' he said, 'by scientific management the 
amount of clay shoveled in an hour may be so 
largely increased, what may we not expect when 
the same methods are used in the higher educa- 
tion ? In the mere matter of reading there is an 
enormous waste. The reader, instead of con- 
150 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 





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151 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

fining himself to the subject which he had chosen, 
reads the book because it interests him, following 
the author's mind in its wanderings. In this way 
he gets a good many ideas which he has no im- 
mediate use for, and which interfere with ideas 
he already has. This is the cause of much men- 
tal confusion. 

'"It is the same in teaching philosophy. The 
expert philosopher knows what he is after and 
gets it. He proves his point with the minimum of 
intellectual effort. There are careless thinkers 
who are always taking into consideration facts 
which interfere with the precision of their own 
conclusions. By calling attention of the foremen 
of the philosophical department to such wasteful 
methods great economies could be effected.' 

"I saw that my client was getting so enthu- 
siastic over his system that he was in danger of 
forgetting the object of his visit. I asked him 
how his plan was working. 

"'I had some difficulty at first,' said he, 'but 
since the old members of the Faculty resigned, 
everything runs like clockwork.' 

"'I congratulate you on your success,' I said. 

"'But there is one thing that troubles me,' 
152 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

answered my client. 'That's what J came to ask 
you about. The University is running smoothly, 
just as I planned it. Everybody does and says 
what is expected. But what is it that makes the 
whole thing so uninteresting?' 

"'Oh,' I said, 'we are coming to the point 
at last. I had supposed your aim was uniformity 
and that you wanted everybody's mind to work 
like yours. I thought you were very efficient in 
carrying out that plan. But if you want them 
to be interesting, that is another matter. You 
see you will have to reorganize your University 
so that it will interest interesting people. 

'"But you are on the right track now. You 
see a worth-while end to work for. You want 
the University to make the intellectual life in- 
teresting, so interesting that the youth who 
resort to it will of their own accord keep up the 
habit of thinking. This, of course, cannot be 
accomplished if the professors are mere task- 
masters, or pedants under the direction of 
taskmasters. They must be men whose minds 
have the breadth and charm that comes only 
with perfect freedom. There is the joy of dis- 
covery, there is the sharpening of wits that 
153 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

comes from conflict of opinion. You must create 
the atmosphere in which scholars thrive and do 
their best. That's a big job you have before you. 
You must not waste any more time in irrelevant 
effort. Just now I fear that your University is 
under the dictatorship of the intellectual pro- 
letariat. 

"'There's time yet to change your plans. If 
you want your University to secure the services 
of interesting people, you must make life pleas- 
ant for them. Let me read you a bit from a 
recently published letter of William James to his 
colleague Palmer. They are the kind of men you 
want to understand, for you can't afford to do 
without them. 

""'The great event in my life recently has 
been reading Santayana's book. Although I ab- 
solutely reject the Platonism of it, I have liter- 
ally squealed with delight at the imperturbable 
perfection with which the position is laid down 
page after page, and grunted with delight at 
such thickening of our Harvard atmosphere. If 
our students now could begin really to under- 
stand what Royce means with his voluntaristic- 
pluralistic monism; what Miinsterberg means 
154 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

with his dualistic scientificism, and what San- 
tayana means with his pessimistic Platonism, 
and what I mean by my crass pluralism, and 
what you mean by your ethical idealism, that 
there are so many religions, ways of fronting 
life, and worth fighting for, we should have a 
genuine philosophic universe at Harvard." 

"'What do you think of that?' 

"'Philosophic universe!' growled my client. 
'It seems to me more like Donnybrook Fair. I 
can't think of anything more calculated to un- 
settle the minds of the students.' 

"'Precisely,' I said, 'that is just what these 
men were conspiring to do. They did n't believe 
in having the mind settled as securely as yours 
is. I know you don't agree with them; but the 
point is that if you had had the management of 
Harvard you could n't have kept James and 
Royce and Palmer and Santayana in the Fac- 
ulty. They would have struck.' 

"My client's countenance darkened. 'There 
we are again,' he said. 'There's something con- 
tagious about the strike. Every class of workers 
is against efficiency. The philosophers are just 
as bad as the rest of them, I suppose.' 
155 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

"'Worse,' I said, 'ever so much worse. If 
you don't humor them and let them think 
philosophically, they won't think at all. The 
artists are pretty near as bad. You want them 
to do some great original work and tell them just 
what is to be done and just how to do it. They 
strike. Or if they take your order and go through 
the motions, they don't do their best.' 

"'It's sabotage!' muttered my client. 

" ' No, it is n't,' I said. ' It 's because they can't 
work that way. It's against their nature. Un- 
less you understand what their nature is you 
can't get results, for there are n't any. Did you 
ever try to draw out a person in conversation? 
Unless you did it in the right way you shut him 
up. Perhaps in the pause in the general con- 
versation you looked at him and asked, "Won't 
you tell that funny story you told the other 
day?" In order to encourage him you explain 
elaborately how funny the story was and how 
admirably it was told. Then you leave the 
poor wretch in the conversational pit you have 
digged for him. He glares and stammers and 
apologizes for his forgetfulness. And yet he 
knows and you know that he is not as stupid as 
156 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

he seems. He has only been betrayed by a false 
friend. That's what happens when you try in 
the wrong way to make people do original work. 
They can't do anything till they get away from 
your influence.' 

"I then read to him a paragraph from Tay- 
lor's ' Scientific Management': 'The history of 
scientific management up to date calls for a 
word of warning. The mechanism of manage- 
ment must not be mistaken for its essence 
or underlying philosophy. Precisely the same 
mechanism will in one case produce disastrous 
results and in another be beneficent. The same 
mechanism which will produce the finest results 
when made to serve the underlying principles of 
scientific management, will lead to failure and 
disaster if accompanied by the wrong spirit in 
those who are using it. Hundreds of people have 
already mistaken the mechanism of this system 
for its spirit.' 

"'Mr. Taylor,' I said, 'insists that before any 
one can get the most and best work done he 
must know the "value of a scientific study of the 
motives which influence workmen in their daily 
work." That's where you have fallen down. 
157 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

Your work at your University is not properly 
motivated. It can't be efficient till the right 
motives come into play. You must decommer- 
cialize your institution.' 

"'Where shall I begin?' he asked. 

"'Begin with your own mind,' I answered. 
'Come again next Friday and we will take up 
the Taylor system from the spiritual end. Sup- 
pose we begin with Jeremy Taylor's "Liberty 
of Prophesying." Read the last chapter of the 
book. It has a good story about Abraham, which 
is n't in the Bible. Abraham sat in the evening 
at his tent door meditating on the most efficient 
methods of converting the heathen. An old 
idolater came and asked hospitality for the 
night. Abraham turned him away with a curse. 
In the night the Lord said to Abraham, "I have 
borne with this man for a hundred years. Canst 
thou not bear with him for one night?" 

"'The lesson of toleration for all varieties of 
human beings is not an easy one. But whether 
in shop management or the management of a 
University, it must be learned. Before you can 
do much in your new undertaking you must 
learn to tolerate the idiosyncrasies of scholars." 5 
158 



ADVISER OF EFFICIENCY EXPERTS 

Bagster gave me a number of illustrations of 
the work of his office. When I rose to go I said, 
"As we are told that a man's life consisteth not 
in the abundance of the things he possesseth, so 
I suppose we might say that a man's efficiency 
consisteth not in the abundance of the things he 
doeth?" 

"Perhaps so," said Bagster, "though I am not 
much afraid of overdoing. I should say that 
a man's spiritual efficiency as a general encour- 
ager of human effort consists in his knowledge 
of the abundance of things worth doing, and in 
his abundant sympathy with those who are try- 
ing to do these things, even if they do not do 
them very well." 



THE PILGRIMS AND THEIR 
CONTEMPORARIES 

The Church of the Latter-Day Saints has an 
interesting ceremonial called "baptizing for the 
dead." The living saint is able to make his 
faith retroactive, and effective for the spiritual 
benefit of persons who were unfortunate enough 
to live before they had an opportunity to know 
what it was. He stands, as it were, godfather to 
his ancestors. He vouches for them as members 
of the true Church. This gives the Church an 
antiquity which it would not otherwise have had. 

Latter-day patriots are not behind Latter- 
Day Saints in their tendency to impute their 
own ideals to generations that have passed away. 
They magnify the virtues of their forefathers, but 
they take for granted that they were the same 
virtues that are now admired. Those who assert 
that the former days were better than these are 
not willing to admit that they may have been 
essentially different from these. 

Just now when we are celebrating the tercen- 
160 



THE PILGRIMS 

tenary of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plym- 
outh, one may be allowed to make a modest plea 
for the individuality of these worthies. Their 
essential ideals and purposes are in danger of 
being obscured by the mists of ancestor worship. 

We are in the midst of an earnest effort to 
Americanize the aliens who dwell among us. It 
is a laudable endeavor, though it is sometimes 
undertaken with a suddenness which alarms the 
innocent foreigner, who does not know why we 
are taking such an interest in his behalf. It is 
difficult for him to understand that he must be 
regenerated before he takes out his naturaliza- 
tion papers. 

What more natural than that we Americanize 
the men of the Mayflower who came to these 
shores in the year 1620? Have we not for a long 
time adopted them as in a peculiar manner our 
forefathers, and have we not a right to attribute 
to them our political views? If they are not 
illustrative of what the great Republic has be- 
come, they have been receiving praise under 
false pretenses. 

Our American faith was formulated in the 
Declaration of Independence and in the Con- 
161 



THE PILGRIMS 

stitution of the United States. If we wish to 
define it further we point proudly to Washing- 
ton's Farewell Address and the Monroe Doc- 
trine. He that doth not believe these things, let 
him be anathema. The true American is ready 
to maintain these principles against the alien 
world. 

That all men have certain inalienable rights, 
that there should be a complete separation be- 
tween the functions of the Church and State, 
that there should be no taxation without rep- 
resentation, that government derives its just 
powers from the consent of the governed — 
these are the principles of 1776. That which 
gives the fighting edge to these principles is the 
stubborn determination that the American con- 
tinent shall be free from the control of European 
monarchs. 

By antedating the Declaration by a hundred 
and fifty years we double the period to which we 
point with pride. There is a chronological ex- 
pansion which is very gratifying. By one swoop 
we take into our national fold several genera- 
tions of respectable people whose characters do 
us honor. They doubtless felt as we do, or would 
162 



THE PILGRIMS 

have done so if they had had the opportunity. 
They were the makers of America; that goes 
without question. Why, then, should we not 
attribute to them American principles as we 
understand them? 

This attempt to Americanize several genera- 
tions of colonial Englishmen has led to two re- 
sults. One is to minimize the significance of the 
American Revolution, and the other is to devital- 
ize the history of the period which preceded it. 

The American War of Independence is treated 
as merely the throwing off of the yoke that had 
long been irksome. The forefathers came to 
these shores to escape the tyranny of James I. 
They set up independent governments as far as 
they were able. At last their descendants com- 
pleted their task and drove out the minions of 
George III. 

This simplifies history, but it ignores the fact 
that a great revolution took place in the latter 
part of the eighteenth century. In this revolu- 
tion something more was involved than inde- 
pendence from the mother country. Thomas 
Jefferson and Thomas Paine were not simply 
taking up the unfinished business of the fore- 
163 



THE PILGRIMS 

fathers; they were announcing new ideas that 
produced a violent explosion in America and 
afterward in France. It is to be noted that 
Washington always spoke of the Revolution, 
and it was a real one. 

The effect of the effort to read into the history 
of the colonial period the spirit of 1776 is to 
produce a curious sense of unreality. We are 
reminded of the stage directions of an old miracle 
play where Adam crosses the stage "on the way 
to be created." 

The pre-revolutionary Americans do not seem 
like real persons with definite purposes of their 
own. They are shadowy types of what their 
descendants are subsequently to become. The 
historian is careful to point out every act that 
has a symbolic suggestion of something that 
afterward came to pass, just as the commen- 
tator on the Old Testament has his eye on the 
New. The phrase continually comes to mind, 
"that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by 
the prophet." The patriotism of the sons is im- 
puted to the fathers, who come trailing clouds 
of genealogical glory which obscure their own 
proper features. 

164 



THE PILGRIMS 

The Covenant of the Mayflower is treated as 
if it were the first draft of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, the New England town meeting be- 
comes a prophecy of the Continental Congress, 
and we are told that a controversy over a stray 
pig led to the discovery of great principles which 
were afterward embodied in the Constitution of 
the United States. As to the Monroe Doctrine, 
that was indigenous to Rhode Island. 

Our romancers have done their part in making 
the early New Englanders appear to be peculiar 
people cut off from all contacts with their con- 
temporaries. There is a sense not only of geo- 
graphical remoteness, but of spiritual aloofness. 
The Salem of Hawthorne might be on another 
planet from London or Bristol. We do not think 
of the grave citizens as having gossipy letters 
from cousins and aunts on the other side of the 
sea. 

It would be a fitting celebration of the tercen- 
tenary to restore the Pilgrims of the Mayflower 
to their proper place in history. They and the 
Puritans who quickly followed them had a very 
vivid life of their own. They had opinions which 
they held with great tenacity and had purposes 
165 



THE PILGRIMS 

which gave unity to their lives. They were good 
haters, and they hated some things which we 
tolerate. They had their limitations and, like all 
earnest people, they prized them highly. They 
were men of their own time and were interested 
in what were then living issues. In order to get a 
realistic view of them, we must think of them as 
belonging to the history of England in one of the 
most stirring periods, and not merely to the 
prenatal history of the United States. They were 
seventeenth-century Englishmen and not faint 
foreshadowings of eighteenth-century Ameri- 
cans. Still less did their enthusiasms correspond 
with those of the great cosmopolitan America of 
our own day. Perhaps there is no element that 
could less easily fuse in our melting-pot. 

They were a part of a movement which was 
just as distinct as that of modern Zionism. To 
be a Zionist, one must be first of all a Jew. In 
going to Palestine the Jew of Warsaw does not 
cut himself off from his own people. Their 
prayers follow him, and they are eager to hear of 
his success. He is where their hearts are. So the 
early New Englander was first of all an English- 
man. He had come to the New World impelled 
166 



THE PILGRIMS 

by ideas which he held in common with thou- 
sands of his countrymen. He was enthusias- 
tically devoted to a great revolutionary cause 
which, beginning with a few obscure people, 
gathered strength until at last it swept away the 
long-established order. In the early part of the 
struggle New England was on the fighting-line. 

It was the Puritan Revolution which culmi- 
nated in the establishment of the English Com- 
monwealth with which these men were related. 
Here they found the realization of their ideals. 
They were stirred by its passions and they re- 
joiced in its success. It is worth our while to 
note the difference between the seventeenth- 
century revolution and that of the eighteenth 
century. 

To understand the Puritan of the seventeenth 
century, we must remember that though he was 
a very independent person, his fundamental in- 
terest was not in the individual man, but in a 
new social order. He did not make our distinction 
between Church and State. Religion was to him 
a public matter. 

That every State should have a religion was 
something on which all parties in that day were 
167 



THE PILGRIMS 

agreed. But the Puritan contention was that the 
religion of the State should not be formal, but 
real. The nation should be held to the same 
strict rules of conscience which bound the pri- 
vate man. There was no excuse for public un- 
righteousness. Milton was setting forth a politi- 
cal creed when he wrote, "A Commonwealth 
ought to be a huge Christian personage, one 
mighty growth and stature of an honest man, 
as compact of virtue as of body." 

When the passengers of the Mayflower formed 
themselves into a body politic "for the glory 
of God and the advancement of the Christian 
religion," they were clearly expressing their 
purpose. Civil government was not an end in 
itself; it was a means for advancing true religion. 

An early New England minister asks the 
question, "What is our errand in the wilder- 
ness?" His answer is that it is not religion as 
a private interest. Personal religion could be 
practiced anywhere. 

"New England's design in this vast under- 
taking is to set up the Kingdom of Christ in 
whole communities. His Kingdom must come 
and his will must be done. Only in so far as his 
168 



THE PILGRIMS 

Kingdom comes can his will be done. This 
Kingdom must be set up in a public and openly- 
prevailing manner. It is in the commonwealth 
that it must be established." 

To set up the "Kingdom of Christ" in an 
"openly prevailing manner" meant something 
more than to establish the kind of church with 
which we are familiar. It was a purpose which 
was at once political and religious. It involved 
the question over which people fight, "Who shall 
rule?" 

The English people fought to determine the 
answer, and the Puritan won. Thirty-three 
years after the Mayflower sailed, "the Instru- 
ment of Government of the Commonwealth of 
England, Scotland, and Ireland and the domin- 
ions thereto belonging" was adopted. In the 
thirty-fifth article of this constitution it is 
declared: "That the Christian Religion, as con- 
tained in the Scriptures be held forth and recom- 
mended as the public profession of these na- 
tions." 

The English Commonwealth in making this 
profession stood before the world as a huge 
Christian personage. The most indomitable 
169 



THE PILGRIMS 

fighters of that generation were behind this 
profession. Those who had scoffed at the Puri- 
tan remained, if not to pray, at least to consider. 
Organized religion was a political power which 
men of the world had to reckon with. 

During the first generation the New England 
Puritans were not spiritually isolated. They 
were in the very thick of a most exciting con- 
flict. Massachusetts was the experiment station 
in which a great political theory was being tried 
out. 

Mrs. Hemans writes of the time 

"When a band of exiles moored their bark 
On the wild New England shore." 

I do not think that the Pilgrims, even in the 
loneliness of the first winter, felt themselves 
to be exiles. That experience they had passed 
through ten years before when they were 
driven out of their own land and took refuge 
in Holland. Then they were, indeed, living as 
aliens among people who had another language. 
But when the Speedwell sailed from Delfts- 
haven, its passengers were being repatriated. 
They were coming once more to live under Eng- 
lish laws and to take part in the work of re- 
170 



THE PILGRIMS 

generating their own country. Religion and pa- 
triotism could once more be united. In England 
they had been separatists, separated not merely 
from the reactionary elements, but from the 
liberal Puritans who had retained their mem- 
bership in the Established Church which they 
were endeavoring to reform. 

Francis Bacon expressed the common opinion 
about them: "As for those whom we called 
Brownists, being, when they were at the most, 
a very small number of very silly and base peo- 
ple here and there in corners dispersed, they are 
now (thanks be to God) by the good remedies 
that have been used, suppressed and worn out, 
so there is scarce any news of them." 

By the time they emerged from their exile the 
movement of which they were a part had al- 
ready broadened. They were aware of the ties 
that bound them to the multitudes of English- 
men who belonged to the new order. 

To religiously minded people at that time 
America was not looked upon as a land of exile, 
but as a land of opportunity. It was that part 
of the king's dominion toward which those who 
were eager for spiritual adventure naturally 
171 



THE PILGRIMS 

turned. So conservative a churchman as George 

Herbert wrote : 

"Religion stands on tiptoe in our land 
Ready to pass to the American strand." 

The official censor hesitated to allow the book 
containing these lines, so dangerous to those 
who suffered from religious unrest, to be pub- 
lished. Professor Palmer has told us that Her- 
bert was thinking of Virginia and not of New 
England, but his lines are suggestive of the 
direction of men's thought. The field of spiritual 
adventure lay on the western shores of the 
Atlantic. 

We know what the "Western fever" meant to 
the Americans of the nineteenth century. It 
was in the blood of all men who were eager to 
make a larger place for themselves than was 
possible in the long-settled parts of the country. 
Seventeenth-century Englishmen felt the same 
impulse, and yielded to it in much the same 
way. And in yielding they were not cutting 
themselves off from their own country; they 
were taking part in its expansion. 

The congregation in Leyden, said Governor 
Bradford, "had a great hope and inward zeal of 
172 



THE PILGRIMS 

laying some good foundation, or at least to 
make some way thereunto, for the propagating 
and advancing the kingdom of Christ in those 
remote parts of the world." 

When the proposition to remove to one of the 
unpeopled regions of America was made public 
"it raised many variable opinions amongst men, 
and caused many fears and doubts among them- 
selves." There were stories of atrocious In- 
dians who, "Not being contente only to kill, and 
take away life, but delight to tormente men in 
the most bloodie maner that may be flesing some 
alive with the shells of fishes, cutting off the 
members and joynts of others by peasmeale and 
broiling on the coles, eate the collips of their 
flesh in their sight while they live: with other 
cruelties horrible to be related." 

But none of these things moved the more 
courageous members of the community. "It 
was answered that all great and honourable 
actions are accompanied with great difficulties, 
and must be both enterprised and overcome by 
answerable courages. It was granted that the 
dangers were great but not desperate; the 
difficulties were many but not invincible. For 
173 



THE PILGRIMS 

though there were many of them likely they 
were not certaine; it might be that sundrie of the 
things feared might never befall, others by 
providente care and the use of good means 
might in a great measure be prevented; and all 
of them, through the help of God, by fortitude 
and patience, might either be borne or overcome." 
They were reminded that they lived in Holland 
"as men in exile," and that there was but one 
way of escape. "After many other particular 
things answered and aledged on both sides it was 
fully concluded by the major parte to put this 
design in execution, and to prosecute it by the 
best means they could." 

Years before, while still in England, they had, 
"as the Lords free people, joyned themselves 
(by a covenant of the Lord) into a church estate, 
in the fellowship of the gospell, to walke in all his 
wayes made known unto them or to be made 
known unto them, according to their best en- 
deavors, whatsoever it would cost them, the 
Lord assisting them." But their church had 
been a voluntary organization without power to 
determine community life. They wanted to do 
what Calvin had done in Geneva, and Knox in 
174 



THE PILGRIMS 

Scotland, to give full political expression to their 
religious convictions. 

It was because he had suspected they were at 
heart revolutionists of a dangerous type that 
King James had driven them out of England. 
While he was still only king in Scotland he had 
learned that Calvinism was something more than 
a system of theology; it involved a theory that 
was hostile to the divine right of kings to rule. 

In Germany the Reformation had first excited 
the hopes of the people and then disappointed 
them. The peasants' revolt, with its threat of a 
great social revolution, had frightened Luther. 
Henceforth he put his trust in princes and sup- 
ported their claims to authority. But in France 
the Reformation took a different turn. A young 
Frenchman, John Calvin, issued a book on "The 
Institutes of the Christian Religion" which had 
an effect on the revolutionary forces of the seven- 
teenth century like that which the works of 
Rousseau had on the revolution of the eighteenth 
century. Both men began with the statement of 
abstract ideas, but these abstractions were taken 
up by thousands of their contemporaries and 
applied to the political problems of the day. It 
175 



THE PILGRIMS 

is interesting that both these men found their 
home in the free city of Geneva. 

Calvin's entrance into Geneva was dramatic, 
and his career a stormy one. With all the self- 
confidence of youth he "took over" the govern- 
ment of the city. The doctrine of the direct 
sovereignty of God was applied to municipal 
affairs. Geneva was ruled in the name of the 
Invisible King. 

The Scotch Calvinist Andrew Melville con- 
fronted the absolutism of King James with a 
doctrine which was equally uncompromising: 
"There are two kings in Scotland, King James 
and Jesus Christ whose subject King James is 
and in whose kingdom he is not a king nor a lord 
over head but a member." As a pious theory, 
James would have assented to the sovereignty of 
God. What he objected to was the Calvinistic 
claim that the ordinary man with the Bible in 
his hand was competent to decide between the 
conflicting claims of the two sovereigns. When 
he came to the throne of England he determined 
to make an open fight for the royal prerogative. 

It was in 1604, in the famous conference at 
Hampton Court, that James in pithy sentences 
176 



THE PILGRIMS 

declared that he was prepared to fight Puri- 
tans, Presbyterians, and Separatists to the death. 
They might differ among themselves, but they 
were all one to him. They all agreed in under- 
mining the royal authority. 

"If you aim at a Scottish presbytery it agreeth 
as well with monarchy as God and the devil. 
Then Jack and Tom and Will shall meet and 
censure me and my council." As for toleration 
of such sedition, he would have none of it. 
"Stay I pray you for one seven years before you 
demand : and then if I grow pursy and fat I may 
purchance hearken unto you; for that govern- 
ment will keep me in breath and give me work 
enough." Rising in his wrath the king cried, "I 
will make them conform, or else I will harry 
them out of the land, or else I will do worse." 

The story of the attempt to carry out that 
threat involves the fortunes of the English peo- 
ple on both sides of the Atlantic. The conflict 
did not end till the head of the son of King James 
was laid upon the block. When Laud and Straf- 
ford began the policy of "thorough," indignant 
Puritans swarmed across the sea. The passions 
stirred by persecution found fierce expression 
177 



THE PILGRIMS 

in the new land, and there was the very human 
desire for retaliation. King James had declared, 
"No Bishop, no King." In Massachusetts men 
boldly said that the Commonwealth could get 
along without either. In England people were 
beginning to say the same things. 

In the great controversy the English people on 
both sides of the ocean were equally interested. 
They read the same vitriolic pamphlets and 
discussed them with the acrimony which is 
possible only among fellow-countrymen. Roger 
Williams recommends a book of Milton to a 
London lady of conservative principles. She 
replies that she has too much respect for the 
memory of her dear father to read anything 
written by such a wicked revolutionist. "As 
for Milton's book which you desire that I should 
read, that is he that wrote a book on the lawful- 
ness of divorce, and if report says true he had at 
that time two or three wives. This perhaps were 
good doctrine in New England, but it were 
abominable in Old England." Then she adds: 
"But you should have seen the answer to it. 
If you can get it I assure you it is worth read- 
ing." To this good lady New England was a 
178 



THE PILGRIMS 

dangerous region, just the place for wild radicals 
of polygamous habits like John Milton. 

In the meantime sermons preached in Massa- 
chusetts before approving magistrates, by minis- 
ters who were known to the English police, were 
reprinted in London. The more controversial 
they were, the more eagerly they were read. 
That the doctrines were revolutionary was noth- 
ing against them in the eyes of those who 
believed that radical changes were necessary. 
The English preachers were becoming equally 
bold despite all repressive laws. "It was the 
Puritan pulpit," said Dr. South, "that supplied 
the field with swordsmen and the Parliament 
with incendiaries." 

The pathos of the early story of the Pilgrims 
must not blind us to the fact that they were on 
the winning side. The party that they repre- 
sented grew in power until it at length imposed 
its will upon England and all her dominions. 
That the triumph was temporary did not make it 
less complete in the eyes of those who witnessed 
it. To those who had taken part in it it seemed 
the beginning of a new era which should endure. 

When Strafford and Laud had perished and 
179 



THE PILGRIMS 

the power of King Charles had been overthrown, 
they seemed to hear the angel of the Book of the 
Revelation: "And the seventh angel sounded; 
and there were great voices in heaven saying, 
the kingdoms of this world are become the king- 
doms of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall 
reign forever and ever. And the four and twenty 
angels which sat before God on their seats fell 
upon their faces and worshipped God, saying, 
We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, 
which art and wast and art to come, because 
thou hast taken to thee thy great power and 
hast reigned." 

Governor Bradford, in 1646, on rereading his 
history of the Plymouth Plantation, adds a note 
on the reverse of a page in which he had told the 
pathetic story of the early trials of the Pilgrims : 
" Full little did I thinke that the downfall of the 
Bishops with their courts, cannons and cere- 
monies had been so neare when I first begane 
these scribled writings (which was aboute the 
year 1630, and so peeced up at times of leasure 
afterward) or that I should have lived to have 
seene or heard of the same but it is the Lord's 
doing and ought to be marvellous in our eyes. 
180 



THE PILGRIMS 

'Every plante which our heavenly father hath 
not planted (saith our Saviour) shall be rooted 
out. I have snared thee and thou are taken, O 
Babell [Bishops] and thou wast not aware, thou 
art found, and also caught, because thou hast 
striven against the Lord.' . . . Do you not now 
see the fruits of your labours all yee servants of 
the Lord, that have suffered for his truth, and 
have been faithfull witnesses of the same, and ye 
little [handfull among the rest, the least among 
the thousands of Israel ? For yee not only had a 
seede time, but many of you have seen the joy- 
full harvest. Should you not then rejoyse, yea 
and again rejoyse, and say Hallelujah, salvation 
and glory and honour and power be to the Lord 
our God; for true and righteous are his judg- 
ments." 

Bradford's postscript, with its cry of triumph, 
is worth considering, for it gives dramatic unity 
to the lives of the Pilgrims. They had a definite 
programme, and it was accomplished. Within a 
single lifetime it was possible to see the seed- 
sowing and the harvest. And the harvest was 
greater than any of the little company had 
imagined to be possible. 
181 



THE PILGRIMS 

There had come to Bradford the news of the 
Battle of Naseby, the storming of Bristol, and 
the surrender of Charles to the Scots. And with 
the political and military success there was the 
triumph of the religious ideas of the Puritans. 
Parliament had on the advice of the assembly 
of divines revolutionized the discipline of the 
Church. No more should the sign of the cross 
be used in baptism, the communion table should 
be set in the body of the church, the ring should 
not be used in marriage, there should be no 
wearing of vestments, no prescribed forms of 
prayer, no keeping of saints' days. All the 
points for which Plymouth and Salem in the days 
of adversity had contended had been accepted 
by those who ruled all England. The story has 
a dramatic completeness like that of the anti- 
slavery movement or the unification of Italy. 
Let us not blur the outlines of the picture by 
confusing it with ideas that belong to another 
era. 

One who watched at the death-bed of Oliver 

Cromwell, and who heard him praying, said "a 

public spirit to God's cause did breathe in him 

to the very last." In these words are expressed 

182 



THE PILGRIMS 

the soul of the Puritan Revolution. The men 
who struggled in behalf of the English Common- 
wealth believed that they knew what God's 
cause was. It was not a private virtue; it was 
large and public, and to be expressed in civil 
institutions for whose maintenance they were 
directly responsible. They were ardent patriots 
and believed that to their own nation, in their 
own time, was given the honor of setting up a 
government in accordance with the revealed will 
of God. Let us think of them in the moments 
when they were filled with the glowing sense of 
the immediate realization of their ideal. Milton 
expressed their mood: "Now once again by all 
concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct 
of holy and devout men, as they daily and 
solemnly express their thoughts, God is decree- 
ing some new and great period in the Church, 
even to the reforming of Reformation itself: 
what does he then but reveal himself to his 
servants, and, as his manner is, first to his Eng- 
lishmen." 

In insisting that we can understand the 
New England Puritans only when we think of 
them as Englishmen profoundly interested in the 
183 



THE PILGRIMS 

great movement of their own day, we are not 
denying their influence in the development of 
American character. We are only saying that 
in order to trace that influence we must follow 
the main current of history rather than any 
parochial side channels. We have as our in- 
heritance, which we share with our British 
brethren, the whole Puritan movement on both 
sides of the Atlantic. Physical geography has 
little to do in the transmission of thought. Ideas 
are not, like cats, attached to places. They fol- 
low persons. The man of the Pilgrim company 
best beloved and longest remembered was the 
pastor, John Robinson, who crossed the sea 
only in spirit. Hampden and Pym and Eliot 
and Baxter and Milton and Cromwell have left 
a deeper impress upon America than all the 
Mathers. 

To-day we are better able to appreciate the 
efforts of the Puritan than were our immediate 
predecessors. We cannot accept his answers, but 
we are beginning to ask the same kind of ques- 
tions. 

We are less sure than we used to be that reli- 
gion and politics can be kept in separate com- 
184 



THE PILGRIMS 

partments. We are not altogether satisfied with 
purely secular solutions of social problems. We 
hear people talking again about a community 
church. In an amendment to the Constitution 
enforcing prohibition we have gone further than 
the Puritan Commonwealth did in looking 
after the morals of the people. The individual 
conscience is more and more reinforced by a 
social conscience that finds its expression in law. 
Our philosophers have been telling us that reli- 
gion is loyalty to a beloved community. All 
this does not indicate a return to the Puritan- 
ism of the seventeenth century, but it makes 
seventeenth-century Puritanism more intelli- 
gible to us. 



EDUCATION IN PURSUIT OF 
HENRY ADAMS 

"The Education of Henry Adams" can be read 
with pleasure and profit in half a dozen different 
ways. Each reader will find something to his 
own mind and much from which he will vig- 
orously dissent. But each one will lay down 
the book with a shamefaced sense of a privilege 
neglected. "Why did n't I know more about 
Henry Adams while he was still living?" 

The way in which the book was intended by 
the author to be read is the last way in which 
the reader is likely to consider it. It is intended 
to be a sequel to another book on a totally differ- 
ent subject, and written in an altogether differ- 
ent style, "Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres." 
It is probable that the serious-minded reader 
will read the alleged introduction only because 
his curiosity has been excited by allusions in the 
sequel. He will find in the account of mediaeval 
art and artists a charm of its own, but he will see 
no connection between the lives and thoughts 
186 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

of the cathedral-builders and the education of 
the New Englander, Henry Adams. In this he 
will be in complete accord with Mr. Adams him- 
self, who again and again asserts that he can see 
no historical or other relation between the two. 
They are quite disconnected; that is the reason 
he brings them together. His purpose is to ex- 
hibit their incompatibility of temper. It is a 
part of his theory of history, the explanation of 
which he postpones to the last chapters. This 
theory is worth considering, but it need not 
interfere with the pleasure of the reader who 
prefers to approach the autobiography in a 
more simple way. 

My own first reading is free from any shadow 
of speculative philosophy. I find here a delight- 
ful work of humor. It is humor in the old Eng- 
lish sense. We see a really solid mind displaying 
itself capriciously and with a whimsical willful- 
ness. The author might have taken as a Shake- 
spearean motto Nym's pugnacious declaration, 
"I have a humor to knock you indifferently 
well." 

As the knocking is done without any regard 
for persons, and includes himself, it has no de- 
187 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

pressing effect. Once accepting his point of 
view, we enjoy his keen thrusts at the respecta- 
bilities of his time; and we really think no worse 
of them because of his disclosures of their weak- 
nesses. 

At the time when the English Puritans were 
beginning to come to New England, an observ- 
ing Scotchman, Robert Baillie, said of them: 
"The humor of this people is very various and 
inclinable to singularities, to differ from all the 
world, and from one another and shortly from 
themselves. No people have so much need of 
a Presbytery." These sturdy non-conformists 
might need a Presbytery, but it was certain 
that they never would submit to its decrees. 

Henry Adams, like all his clan, was "inclin- 
able to singularities." That made him interest- 
ing. He had a keen eye for the shortcomings 
both of himself and his friends. He was in no 
danger of falling into the habit of indiscriminate 
eulogy. 

He had the materials for a voluminous auto- 
biography of the familiar sort. He might have 
written as a fortunate man who had lived a 
pleasant life and who had achieved a fair meas- 
188 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

ure of success. He was born into what was per- 
haps the most distinguished family in America, 
one which had produced a remarkable succession 
of able men. He had the best advantages in 
school and college; was private secretary to his 
father, the Minister to Great Britain during the 
Civil War; was intimate with the most impor- 
tant men in the political life of London and Wash- 
ington; taught history in Harvard University, 
winning high praise from competent judges; 
spent profitable years on a work on United 
States history; was editor of "The North Amer- 
ican Review"; was the author of an admirable 
work on mediaeval thought as expressed in ar- 
chitecture; and throughout his active career was 
influential in some of the most important move- 
ments for political reform. He did many things 
and he did most of them very well. 

It was his humor to treat these positive 
achievements as if they were accidental inter- 
ruptions in the pursuit of the will-o'-the-wisp 
which he calls education. Or to "be more exact, 
it was education that was pursuing the will-o'- 
the-wisp Henry Adams. 

He refuses till the very end of the book to tell 
189 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

us what he means either by education or by 
Henry Adams. "That's the humor of it." In 
the background we see the shadowy form of a 
Henry Adams that might have been created by a 
proper kind of education. This ideal character 
was never produced, and the author attempts to 
show us the reason. We are shown in detail the 
circumstances which warped his mind and pre- 
vented him from being something different from 
what he actually became. 

Saint Paul propounded the whimsical ques- 
tion, "Shall the thing formed say to him that 
formed it, Why hast thou formed me thus?" 
The conception of the clay talking back at the 
potter, and criticizing him for its own imperfect 
shape, introduces many complexities of think- 
ing. The clay must have a gift of quick repartee, 
for the potter has the advantage of it; for while 
it is complaining of being made into one shape, 
it may be moulded into another. The clay con- 
sidered as a critic of its maker is always at a 
disadvantage, as it cannot be sure as to how it 
is coming out. 

Never has such a controversy been carried on 

with more pertinacity and skill than in "The 

190 






EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

Education of Henry Adams." There have been 
many books of autobiography and more books 
on education. Henry Adams determined to 
write a book of educational autobiography, in 
which he should exhibit not his achievements, 
but his limitations. Assuming toward himself 
the attitude of a candid friend, he would use 
himself as an example of the present deplorable 
state of education. 

He points out his own shortcomings with the 
suppressed glee which characterizes the critic 
who detects a flaw in a much-praised work of 
art. But never for a moment does he take the 
blame for the imperfection of his education. 
He is the clay and he will put the whole respon- 
sibility on his maker or makers. He is a very 
critical piece of clay, and very much dissatisfied 
with his shape. The influences which have made 
him what he is have made a poor job of it. 

Usually when an elderly gentleman sits down 
to write about himself, the sharp angles of his 
life are obscured by the atmosphere of general 
benevolence. Even if he chooses to use the third 
person, there is always a kindly feeling for "the 
subject of this sketch." We are made to feel 
191 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

that there was more to him than the general 
public had suspected. And his friends also 
stand out in the reflected glory of his presence. 
Reminiscence has a charity of its own which 
covers a multitude of sins. 

Henry Adams chose to write of himself in a 
different way. His book is neither an apologia 
nor a confession. It is simply a bit of criticism 
of a fragment of humanity with which he hap- 
pened to be intimately acquainted. He says in 
effect : 

"Here am I, one Henry Adams, a curious 
creature formed by a particular environment. 
What you choose to call my individuality is 
simply a name for a number of limitations which 
differentiate me from other members of the 
genus to which I belong. I am absurdly limited 
in my capacity to understand reality, and in my 
sympathy with other human beings. I have 
always had an intense curiosity to know why I 
am not different from what I am. This curiosity 
has been only partially gratified. In regard to 
my character, my personal preferences have not 
been gratified. 

" I was born in New England, which as every 
192 



i 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

one knows has a chilly climate which not only 
gets into the bones, but into the temper. When 
I go among people of more tropical natures, I 
notice the difference. The warm expression of 
emotion is not natural to me. At times I doubt 
whether I have the emotion. There is a certain 
reserve of manner which some New Englanders 
are rather proud of. I dislike it very much. 
This is not to say that I admire people from 
other sections of the country who lack this re- 
serve. Far from it! They seem to me a little 
vulgar. But my shrinking from them is, I am 
aware, a provincial peculiarity, arising doubt- 
less from premature exposure to the east wind. 
"I was born a member of a chilly family. The 
political and social prejudices of the family 
formed an essential part of the education that 
was imposed upon me. I have never really re- 
covered from it, nor have I endeavored to do so. 
That is the worst of it. For the Adamses have 
always been sturdy individualists of the eight- 
eenth-century type. They have always been 
strong and independent, they have never been 
good mixers; neither have I. I am quite aware 
that many of my political opinions have been 
193 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

warped by my family inheritance. But what 
would you do, dear reader, if you had been 
born an Adams, and had John Quincy Adams 
for your grandfather, and the memory of uncom- 
promising John Adams behind him, besides no 
one knows how many Quincys? You might 
have been no more open-minded than I have 
been. In looking back over the successive stages 
in my mental development, I remember that my 
vision of reality was constantly obscured by 
some member of my family who got between me 
and the truth." 

But no paraphrase can do justice to the en- 
gaging frankness with which Henry Adams re- 
lates the story of his own mis-education. \jVe 
are asked to observe the processes — some- 
times direct and brutal, often extremely subtle 
— by which his mind was moulded quite against 
his will. At every turn some unwelcome form of 
education was thrust upon him. Something or 
somebody was always interfering with his men- 
tal development and giving it a queer twist. 

There is a delightful account of the first con- 
sciousness on the part of Henry Adams that the 
educators were upon him and were about to do 
194 






EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

something to his mind. He was about six years 
old and was engaged in what promised to be a 
successful resistance to his mother's attempt to 
take him to school. It was then that the re- 
doubtable figure of John Quincy Adams ap- 
peared upon the scene, and took the boy by the 
hand. 

"The boy reflected that an old gentleman 
close on eighty would never trouble himself to 
walk near a mile on a hot summer morning over 
a shadeless road to take a boy to school, and 
that it would be strange if a lad imbued with 
the passion of freedom could not find a corner 
to dodge around, somewhere before reaching 
the school door. Then and always, the boy in- 
sisted that this reasoning justified his apparent 
submission; but the old man did not stop, and 
the boy saw all his strategical points turned, 
one after another, until he found himself seated 
inside the school, and obviously the centre of 
curious if not malevolent criticism. Not till 
then did the President release his hand and 
depart." 

Throughout the book this attitude of the un- 
willing schoolboy silently enduring an educa- 
195 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

tional process against which he inwardly rebels 
is preserved. 

"Resistance to something was the law of 
New England nature; the boy looked out on the 
world with the instinct of resistance; for num- 
berless generations his predecessors had viewed 
the world chiefly as a thing to be reformed, 
filled with evil forces to be abolished, and they 
saw no reason to suppose that they had wholly 
succeeded in the abolition; the duty was un- 
changed. That duty implied not only resistance 
to evil but hatred of it. Boys naturally look on 
all force as an enemy, and generally find it so, 
but the New Englander, whether boy or man, 
in his long struggle with a stingy or hostile 
universe, had learned also to love the pleasure of 
hating; his joys were few." 

Persons who enjoy airing their antipathies are 
apt to choose some particular character on which 
they visit their wrath. One person has a consti- 
tutional dislike of priests or parsons; there are 
dramatic critics who look at the "tired business 
man" as the natural enemy; and there are fas- 
tidious intellectuals who object violently to that 
commonplace individual "the man in the street." 
1% 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

The natural enemy of Henry Adams was the 
schoolmaster. He was a hypocrite who pre- 
tended to educate, something which was quite 
beyond his power. As boy and man Adams 
maintained his attitude of whimsical antago- 
nism to all who attempted to improve his mind. 
When the time came to go to Harvard College 
he went. But he knew that no particular good 
would come of it. 

"The four years passed at college were, for his 
purposes, wasted. Harvard College was a good 
school, but at bottom what the boy disliked 
most was any school at all. He did not want to 
be one in a hundred — one per cent of an educa- 
tion. He regarded himself as the only person 
for whom his education had value, and he 
wanted the whole of it. He got barely half of an 
average." 

"He never knew what other students thought 
of it, or what they thought they gained from 
it; nor would their opinion have much affected 
his. From the first, he wanted to be done 
with it." 

It was beginning to be the fashion in those 
days to go to Germany to finish the education 
197 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

begun in America. So to the University of Ber- 
lin young Adams went. 

"Dropped into Berlin one morning without 
guide or direction, the young man in search of 
education floundered in a mere mess of misun- 
derstandings. He could never recall what he ex- 
pected to find, but whatever he expected, it had 
no relation with what it turned out to be." 

It was soon evident that the German univer- 
sity had nothing for him. "The shock that up- 
set him was the discovery of the university it- 
self. He had thought Harvard College a torpid 
school, but it was instinct with life compared 
with all that he could see of the University of 
Berlin." 

When years afterward Harvard College, for- 
getful of his scorn, or perhaps blandly uncon- 
scious of it, invited him to be a professor of 
history, there arose a contest like that which 
we read of in the early Church, where it was the 
custom to lay violent hands on a person and 
make him a bishop against his will. 

Adams "could see no relation whatever be- 
tween himself and a professorship. He sought 
education; he did not sell it. He knew no his- 
198 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

tory; he knew only a few historians; his igno- 
rance was mischievous, because it was literary, 
accidental, indifferent." 

He saw the shadow of the prison-house creep- 
ing over him. He who hated schoolmasters and 
all their ways must become one. He who knew 
no history and was beginning to doubt whether 
there ever was such a thing, must teach it to 
boys who might be deceived into taking him for 
an authority. And Adams had to deal with 
President Eliot, who had been convinced that 
he was the man for the job. The interview is 
related with the air of a man who had yielded to 
superior force. 

"'But, Mr. President,' urged Adams, 'I know 
nothing about Mediaeval History.' With the 
courteous and bland smile so familiar for the 
next generation of Americans, Mr. Eliot mildly 
but firmly replied, 'If you will point out to me 
any one who knows more, Mr. Adams, I will 
appoint him.' " 

Herein President Eliot showed his astute- 
ness, for however certain Adams was of his own 
limitations, he was equally sure of the limita- 
tions of his contemporaries, and as he remarks, 
199 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

"He could not say that under the circumstances 
the appointment of any professor seemed un- 
necessary." 

So the unwilling schoolboy had become the 
unwilling professor. 

"At twenty-four hours' notice, he broke his 
life in halves again in order to begin a new 
education, on lines he had not chosen, in sub- 
jects for which he cared less than nothing; in a 
place he did not love, and before a future which 
repelled. Thousands of men have to do the same 
thing, but his case was peculiar because he had 
no need to do it. . . . He thought it a mistake; 
but his opinion did not prove that it was one; 
since, in all probability, whatever he did would 
be more or less a mistake." 

This crowning indignity of being a Harvard 
professor Adams endured for seven years. The 
worst of it was that his colleagues and students 
seemed to have thought he was a success. 

"The boys worked like rabbits, and dug holes 
all over the field of archaic society; no difficulty 
stopped them; unknown languages yielded be- 
fore their attack, and customary law became 
familiar as the police court; undoubtedly they 
200 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

learned after a fashion to chase an idea like a 
hare through as dense a thicket of obscure facts 
as they were likely to meet at the bar; but their 
teacher knew, from his own experience, that his 
wonderful method led nowhere. . . . What was 
the use of training an active mind to waste its 
energy? The experiments might in time train 
Adams as a professor, but this result was still 
less to his taste." 

This last consideration led Adams to shake 
the dust of Cambridge from his feet. If he re- 
mained longer he might be not only a professor, 
but an unusually good one. 

But the Harvard professorship was only an 
episode. During the Civil War Education had 
pursued him relentlessly. He had been the pri- 
vate secretary of his father, the American Min- 
ister to Great Britain. He was enabled to look 
behind the scenes and study international poli- 
tics at first hand. 

"The most costly tutors in the world were 
provided for him at public expense — Lord 
Palmerston, Lord Russell, Lord Westbury, Lord 
Selborne, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Granville, and 
their associates, paid by the British Govern- 
201 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

ment; William H. Seward, Charles Francis 
Adams, William Maxwell Evarts, Thurlow 
Weed, and other considerable professors em- 
ployed by the American Government; but there 
was only one student to profit by this immense 
staff of teachers. The private secretary alone 
sought education." 

The result of this expensive course was that 
Henry Adams acquired a knowledge of the 
seamy side of English politics which destroyed 
many of his earlier illusions. Among the great 
men with whom he had been brought in contact 
there were only one or two whom he could trust. 
"Perhaps this was the sufficient result of his 
diplomatic education; it seemed to be the 
whole." He confesses that one result which 
came from the snubs he received in the school of 
politics was "to make him a harsh judge of his 
masters." 

To any one interested in the political life of 
England and America from i860 to the end of 
the century, the book of Henry Adams will be 
read for its historical interest. Adams revived a 
literary art which reached its perfection in the 
seventeenth century, when men like Clarendon 
202 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

and Bishop Burnet and Thomas Fuller de- 
lighted to sum up in a few sentences the "char- 
acter" of some worthy. 

Henry Adams had not Clarendon's skill in 
such verbal portraiture, and he lacked the genial 
sympathy of Fuller, but for the most part his 
touch was sure. If we do not see his charac- 
ters as they actually were, we are enabled to see 
them as he saw them. If he indicates his dislike 
for certain persons, he at the same time indicates 
the specific reasons for his dislikes. 

The English statesmen who were in power 
during our Civil War fare badly at his hands. 
We see Gladstone plotting against the American 
Union and then clumsily trying to disclaim 
responsibility. Earl Russell, whom we have 
been taught to look upon as the type of bluff, 
honest, obstinate Englishman, is described as 
"thoroughly dishonest," while Palmerston, our 
American Diogenes, is found to be the one man 
of rectitude. "Palmerston told no falsehoods; 
made no professions; concealed no opinions; 
was detected in no double-dealing." 

Adams's estimate of Grant is distinctly a 
shock to the American hero-worshiper; but it 
203 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

should be remembered that it is President 
Grant and not General Grant of whom he is 
writing. Grant represented "a type that was 
p re-intellectual, archaic, and would have seemed 
so even to the cave dwellers." The scandals 
which shocked right-minded people during his 
administrations Adams attributes to the Pres- 
ident's strange "lapses of intelligence." He 
was a man of "intermittent energy, immensely 
powerful when awake, but passive and plastic 
in repose." Because of this he was easily im- 
posed upon by those who knew both his strength 
and his weakness. Grant worried and irritated 
Adams because he seemed to be an anachronism. 
"He had no right to exist. He should have been 
extinct long ago." 

If Henry Adams had his antipathies he had 
his admirations as well. His characterization of 
Evarts reminds one of the gentlemen who ap- 
pear on the pages of Clarendon. 

"Generous by nature, prodigal in hospitality, 
fond of young people, and a born man-of-the- 
world, Evarts gave and took liberally, without 
scruple, and accepted the world without fear- 
ing or abusing it. . . . His talk was broad and 
204 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

free. He laughed where he could; he joked if a 
joke was possible; he was true to his friends, 
and never lost his temper." 

In a few sentences we are made to see Andrew 
Johnson sitting at his desk in the White House, 
an old-fashioned Southern statesman with a 
look of self-esteem that had its value, and his 
face "inspired by a moral certainty of right- 
eousness." 

"This self-assurance not only gave Andrew 
Johnson the look of a true President, but 
actually made him one. When Adams came to 
look back on it afterwards he was surprised to 
realize how strong the Executive was in 1868 — 
perhaps the strongest he was ever to see." 

We see Seward in 1861. "A slouching, slen- 
der figure; a head like a wise macaw; a beaked 
nose; shaggy eyebrows; unorderly hair and 
clothes; hoarse voice; offhand manner; free talk, 
and perpetual cigar." 

The same realism gives value to his account of 
Lincoln as he saw him. "He saw Mr. Lincoln 
but once; at the melancholy function called an 
Inaugural Ball. Of course he looked anxiously 
for a sign of character. He saw a long, awkward 
205 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

figure; a plain, ploughed face; a mind, absent in 
part, and in part evidently worried by white 
kid gloves; features that expressed neither self- 
satisfaction nor any other familiar American- 
ism; . . . above all a lack of apparent force." 

It is a realistic picture also that he draws of 
the Americans after the war, all so busy that 
they had no time to consider the direction in 
which they were going. 

"They had no time for thought; they saw and 
could see nothing beyond their day's work; their 
attitude to the universe outside them was that 
of the deep-sea fish. Above all they naturally 
and intensely disliked to be told what to do, and 
how to do it, by men who took their ideas and 
their methods from the abstract theories of 
history, philosophy, or theology." 

Adams's most discriminating portraits are 
those of his friends, whose limitations he points 
out with engaging candor. His analysis of the 
character of Henry Cabot Lodge, who writes 
the preface to the book, could scarcely be sur- 
passed for this quality. Only in Clarence King 
and John Hay does he find criticism impossible. 
Here his language is that of romantic affection. 
206 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

There has been no writer who has given us 
such a lifelike impression of the "reformers" 
who undertook to make headway against the 
unabashed corruption of American politics and 
business in the two decades after the Civil War. 
We are made to see the group of men who ad- 
vocated causes like Civil Service Reform. They 
were conscious of good intentions, but they had 
lost contact with the masses of the people. The 
fact was they represented a social system that 
the war had destroyed. They had not yet made 
connection with the new forces which were just 
coming into play. They were for the most part 
critics rather than creators. 

There is a pleasant cynicism in Adams's ac- 
count of his fellow- reformers. "As usual Adams 
found himself fifty years behind his time, but 
a number of belated wanderers kept him com- 
pany, and they produced on each other the effect 
or illusion of a public opinion. They straggled 
apart, at longer and longer intervals, through 
the procession, but they were still within hearing 
distance of each other." 

The result of this experience in fighting the 
bosses is summed up in a few words. "One 
207 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

seldom can see much education in the kick of a 
broncho; even less in the kick of a mule. The 
lesson it teaches is only that of getting out of 
the animal's way. This was the lesson that 
Henry Adams had learned over and over again 
in politics since i860." 

As one reads one thinks of the different lesson 
Theodore Roosevelt learned in his experience 
both with bronchos and political bosses. It 
never occurred to Theodore Roosevelt to get 
out of the way of either. 

The reader who is interested in personal rem- 
iniscences may leave the last chapters unread. 
"A Dynamic Theory of History" seems to be 
only a philosophical dissertation appended to a 
work of a different kind. But the reader who is 
interested in philosophy will begin with the last 
chapter and read backward. Here Henry Adams 
for the first time clearly states what he means by 
"education" and what he means by "Henry 
Adams." One is the illustration of the other. 

The world as he sees it is a constant play of 

forces which are continually being accelerated. 

This is not a real universe whose coherence cai 

be rationally understood. It is a multiverse. 

20S 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

The whirling forces make us and unmake us. 
We think we can understand and by under- 
standing direct them to our own advantage. 
In this we deceive ourselves. Our very inven- 
tions do not help us to gain control of our own 
destinies; they only introduce new complexities 
into our lives. Our consciousness only regis- 
ters the force that from time to time impinges 
on us. 

He declares that "the fiction that society 
educated itself or aimed at a conscious purpose 
was upset by the compass and gunpowder. . . . 
Man commonly begs the question by taking for 
granted that he captures the forces. A dynamic 
theory, assigning attractive force to opposing 
bodies in proportion to the law of mass, takes for 
granted that the forces of nature capture man. 
The sum of force attracts; the feeble atom or 
molecule called man is attracted; he suffers 
education or growth; he is the sum of the forces 
that attract him; his body and his thought are 
alike their product; the movement of the forces 
controls the progress of his mind, since he can 
know nothing but the motions which impinge on 
his senses, whose sum makes education," 
209 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

Here you have Henry Adams's philosophy in 
a nutshell. The reader is made to see why the 
autobiography is set forth as a sequel to "Mont- 
Saint-Michel and Chartres." The minds of the 
cathedral-builders represented simply the sum 
of the forces that had then been released. In the 
nineteenth century new combinations of force 
had come into play. Mediaeval unity had given 
place to modern multiplicity in all its amazing 
manifestations. The world was no longer at 
unity with itself. "An immense volume of force 
had detached itself from the unknown universe 
of energy." Human thought was "caught and 
whirled about in the vortex of infinite forces. 
. . . Man could no longer hold it off. Forces 
grasped his wrists and flung him about as though 
he had hold of a live wire or a runaway auto- 
mobile." 

This was Henry Adams's philosophical theory. 
According to it biography ought to be as much a 
matter of scientific precision as a chemical ex- 
periment. Know the age a man lives in, and 
the forces which are dominant, and you know 
the man. 

Henry Adams offers himself for the experi- 
,219 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

mental test. "See me," he says, "a victim of 
the multitudinous forces released in the nine- 
teenth century. Compare me with the builders 
of the cathedral of Chartres. How simple and 
joyous they were. How distracted and inco- 
herent the life of Henry Adams has been. The 
acceleration of the physical forces and the as- 
tounding march of invention accounts for the 
difference. The old unity of mind is impossible. 

"The struggle is not of men, but of forces. 
The men become every year more and more 
creatures of force, massed about a central power 
house. The conflict is no longer between men 
but between the motors that drive the men." 

It was as an illustration of his philosophy, he 
tells us, that he adventured upon autobiog- 
raphy. 

"Setting himself to the task, he began a 
volume which he mentally knew as 'Mont- 
Saint-Michel and Chartres: a Study of Thir- 
teenth-Century Unity.' From that point he 
proposed to fix a position for himself which he 
could label: 'The Education of Henry Adams: 
a Study of Twentieth-Century Multiplicity.' 
With the help of these two points of relation, he 
211 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 

hoped to project his lines forward and backward 
indefinitely." 

According to his theory the forces which had 
destroyed the unity of his own life were be- 
coming every year more powerful. "If the 
acceleration measured by the development and 
economy of forces were to continue at its rate 
since 1800 the mathematician of 1950 should be 
able to plot the future orbit of the human race 
as accurately as that of the November meteor- 
oids." 

Did Henry Adams prove his theory by his 
life ? I think not. The very fact that his account 
of himself is so amusing indicates an incongruity 
between what he really was and the mere crea- 
ture of circumstance which he pretends to have 
been. The real Henry Adams took a hand in his 
own education, and was persistent enough to 
achieve very definite results. When we take up 
his solid historical works we are certain that 
these were the products of purposeful activity. 
Had he lived in the eleventh century or the 
thirteenth century, he might have directed his 
mind to different objects, but it would have been 
the same kind of mind. He would have found 
212 



EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS . 

plenty of multiplicity in the Middle Ages if he 
had lived at that time, and might have seen less 
unity than when contemplating from a distance. 
According to the theory which Mr. Adams 
expounded, his actions and opinions ought to 
have been predictable without any appeal to 
that mysterious something which we call per- 
sonality. As a matter of fact, personality ob- 
truded itself in the most obstreperous fashion. 
When Henry Adams appears in proper guise his 
theory begins to fade. And so our final reading 
brings us back to our first approach, and we are 
conscious of the element of humor. We are re- 
minded of his account of the way in which his 
remarks about Beethoven were received in his 
student days at Berlin. He "felt a slight sur- 
prise when Mr. Apthorp and the others laughed, 
as though they thought it humor. He saw no 
humor in it." 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

A moderately well-to-do man may live in 
almost any community in that degree of privacy 
which suits his convenience. His neighbors let 
him come and go as he pleases, and there is no 
tendency on the part of the public to criticize 
him. But let him suddenly become possessed 
of a large amount of money and all is changed. 
Every step of the newly rich is watched with 
interest. His wealth becomes an interrogation 
mark. Social reformers ask, "How did he come 
by it?" Philanthropists ask, "What will he do 
with it?" 

It is the same way with any unusual exhibi- 
tion of intellectual ability. The man of ordinary 
talent is allowed to use it as he sees fit and no- 
body feels aggrieved when he wastes a good 
deal of it. But it is not so with that unusual and 
spectacular endowment which we call "Genius." 
When it is rumored that any person has that 
rare gift, he becomes the object not merely of 
admiration, but of public solicitude. Books are 
214 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

written about him. He is studied from every 
point of view. In the end the critics agree 
that he has been over-praised by other crit- 
ics, whereupon they proceed to catalogue his 
limitations. 

But the greatest complaint against genius is 
that it is so inconstant. Sporadic cases occur here 
and there, but it never becomes epidemic. It is 
like one of those rare diseases that doctors com- 
plain of, which they seldom meet in their or- 
dinary practice. 

When there is a case of genius it is very hard 
to diagnose it. There may be all the superficial 
symptoms and yet it may turn out to be some- 
thing else. It is never safe to trust to the feelings 
of the person who is supposed to be affected. 
He is easily deceived, especially if he has been 
reading a good deal on the subject. 

Why is genius so inconstant in its operation? 
Why can we not have a supply adequate to the 
demand ? 

There is a tendency to lay the blame on the 

community. That is what we do in everything 

else, and it seems reasonable to follow the same 

rule here. The man of genius is supposed to be 

215 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

an unusually sensitive creature very dependent 
on a congenial environment. Society by taking 
thought might develop a sufficient number of 
geniuses of the first class. Instead of doing this 
it concerns itself chiefly with the education of a 
vast host of mediocrities. For this it is much to 
blame. When now and then a genius happens to 
be born, he ought to assert himself and make 
known his wants. Society should be alert to 
render first aid. 

When the genius once gets started he should 
allow nothing to stand in the way of his self- 
expression. It is the duty he owes to the com- 
munity he has come to rebuke and enlighten. 

This doctrine has recently been presented in a 
most interesting way by Mr. Van Wyck Brooks 
in his book entitled "The Ordeal of Mark 
Twain." It contains an indictment of the 
American public, and especially of the Middle 
West, for thwarting and bringing to naught a 
great genius. 

The author starts with the assumption that 

Mark Twain was a heaven-born genius dowered 

with all the gifts of the gods. He had it in him 

to produce a great work of literary art whose 

216 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

austere beauty would be the delight of the dis- 
cerning and the despair of the vulgar. 

Being a genius he had that innate capacity to 
take infinite pains which we are taught is the 
characteristic of this famed class. He had a fine 
artistic conscience to begin with. He had the 
artist's scorn of conventionalities and the ar- 
tist's intolerance for mediocrity. He had the 
artist's sensitiveness which made the incon- 
gruous a pain. Being thus endowed he was 
fitted to give the supreme interpretation of 
American life. Did he do it? No, he did some- 
thing quite different. Mr. Brooks traces the 
successive stages in the great betrayal of genius. 

In the first place there was Hannibal, Mis- 
souri, in the first half of the last century. It 
was the last place in the world for a great ar- 
tistic genius to be born in. "A desert of human 
sand! The barrenest spot in all Christendom, 
surely, for the seeds of genius to fall in." 

Into that human desert Mark Twain was 
born. The intimations in regard to his early 
life seem scanty, but one sinister fact is dis- 
covered. In his early years the maternal influ- 
ence was strong. 

217 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

"We can say at least at this point that Mark 
Twain was, quite definitely, in his mother's lead- 
ing strings. What was the inevitable result? 
I have said, not I hope with too much presump- 
tion, that Mark Twain had already shown him- 
self the born, predestined artist, that his whole 
nature manifested what is called a tendency 
toward the creative life." 

Here the mother interfered. When he was 
twelve years old his father died and his mother 
took this occasion to make him promise to be a 
good boy. The result of this was one of those 
repressions which according to Freud are so 
dangerous. To be a good boy according to the 
local standards was obviously incompatible with 
being a great artist. "One thing," says Mr. 
Brooks, "we feel with irresistible certitude, 
Mark Twain's fate was, once for all, decided 
there." 

Indeed, it was useless for him to struggle 
against the maternal influence. "His wish to be 
an artist which has encountered such an un- 
surmountable obstacle in the disapproval of his 
mother is now repressed." 

Of course the boy had not expressed, so far as 
218 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

we are told, any desire to be an artist, and if he 
had his mother would probably have expressed 
no objection; an artist being a man who took 
daguerreotypes. This was a respectable and 
sufficiently lucrative business in Hannibal. But 
it is the Freudian wish which we are dealing 
with, and it is all the more fateful when it is un- 
expressed. 

The story that follows is a tragedy of errors. 
The genius who is wishing to communicate with 
the world is trying to use Samuel L. Clemens as 
the medium. If the conditions were favorable 
the thing could be done, but the conditions 
never are favorable. There are local influences 
at work which are very much like malicious 
animal magnetism. Says Mr. Brooks, "The cir- 
cumstances that surrounded Mark Twain were 
not merely passively unfavorable, but they were 
actively, overwhelmingly unfavorable." 

And the worst of it was that the victim made 
no determined effort to become what Nature 
designed him to be. The genius which Mr. 
Brooks discovered in Mark Twain was lofty and 
had a cosmopolitan breadth, but was without 
any glimmer of humor. Not only so, but it 
219 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

seems to have been actively hostile to any mani- 
festation of this quality. I judge this from 
the way in which all manifestations of it are 
treated. 

In treating the psychogenesis of Mark Twain's 
humor the author remarks: "According to 
Freud whose investigations in this field are per- 
haps the most enlightening we have, the pleas- 
urable effect of humor consists in affording an 
economy of expenditure of feeling. It requires 
an infinitely smaller psychic effort to expel one's 
spleen in a verbal joke than in a practical joke 
or a murder, — the common methods among the 
pioneers, — and it is infinitely safer, too, a fact 
that instantly explains the function of the hu- 
morist in pioneer society, and the immense suc- 
cess of Mark Twain." 

Instead of going about his great work as a 
divinely gifted artist should, young Clemens 
was all the time satisfying his love of adven- 
ture with this tepid substitute for homicide. 
When he starts out for Nevada he writes in 
"Roughing It": "Nothing helps scenery like 
ham and eggs. Ham and eggs and after this a 
pipe — an old, rank, delicious pipe — ham and 
220 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

eggs and scenery, a down grade, a flying coach, 
a fragrant pipe, and a contented heart — these 
make happiness." 

Mr. Brooks comments grimly — "A down 
grade going west; he is on the loose, you see." 
Who knows what that may mean? "Only one 
who knows the fearful retribution his own soul is 
going to exact of him." 

Hannibal, Missouri, Virginia City, Nevada, 
and Elmira, New York, all exerted a malign 
influence on Mark Twain's genius, while we are 
made aware of a deadly chill emanating from 
the literary purlieus of Boston. 

Then there was Mrs. Clemens whom her hus- 
band idolized. We learn from his own confes- 
sions that he frequently asked her advice and 
sometimes took it. But the most baleful results 
came from the companionship of Mr. Howells. 
It was not that Mr. Howells meant to do any 
harm. He did, nevertheless, exert an influence 
toward general propriety in language. It is on 
record that a number of picturesque swear 
words which Mark Twain had learned in Nevada 
were eliminated for friendship's sake. Mr. 
Howells was like a planet unconsciously pulling 
221 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

another planet out of its orbit. There were other 
literary men who interfered in a like manner. 
As these companions of the more prosperous 
period are enumerated we feel sure that Mark 
Twain's artistic originality is being weakened. 
We feel like joining in the anxious refrain, 
"Where is my wandering boy to-night?" 

The career of Mark Twain as thus told seems 
singularly lacking in any attempt at self-realiza- 
tion. After the age of twelve there seems to have 
been "nothing doing." When Duty whispered 
low, "Go write the great interpretation of 
American life," the youth did not even say, 
"I cannot." He only absentmindedly went and 
did something else. Mr. Brooks quotes from his 
manifold confessions, which are remorselessly 
used against him. From these it appears that 
Mark Twain never seriously attempted to do 
the things he ought to have done and that he 
took a boyish pleasure in doing the things he 
ought not to have done. The life-story is one to 
make the judicious grieve. 

Fortunately the judicious are not the only 
people in the world. The injudicious, with whom 
I confess in this matter to be in sympathy, do 
222 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

not take the tale of repressed and thwarted 
genius so seriously. 

The reason is this. We do not call that degree 
of artistic ability that can be so easily turned 
aside from its course by the name of genius. 
Genius must stand a quantitative as well as a 
qualitative test. It must be not only something 
good in kind, but there must be a great deal of 
it — in fact so much of it as to be irrepressible. 

The Humboldt River wanders for several 
hundred miles through the sagebrush, till it 
comes within sight of the barrier of the Sierra 
Nevada. Then it grows discouraged and, giving 
up the quest of the sea, evaporates in a dismal 
alkaline sink. That is because the Humboldt, 
though a creditable stream for an arid country, is 
not a great river. If it had the volume of the 
Amazon it would not let itself be dried up in that 
way. It would fill up the whole great basin and 
then overflow. 

When we speak of a great genius we have the 
idea of irrepressible power. The man is bigger 
than his environment, and instead of allowing it 
to master him, he masters it. It is not enough 
that he has certain fine qualities; he has them 
223 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

in such large quantities that they overcome all 
opposition. 

There is evidence that Mark Twain had a 
number of natural aptitudes that were repressed. 
In this he was like the rest of us. We are all 
more or less nipped in the bud. He also, like the 
rest of us, frequently had the desire to be some- 
body else. When he allowed himself to think 
what he might have been if he had been other- 
wise, he was more or less unhappy. He was as he 
grew older accustomed to think of himself as a 
blighted being, and to speak rather bitterly of 
"the damned human race." In all this he was 
not out of the ordinary. Thousands of elderly 
gentlemen are at this moment grumbling in 
much the same way. Nobody pays much atten- 
tion to them, because they have done nothing 
remarkable to attract attention. 

He had one quality in such superabundance 
that it could not be repressed. It bubbled up 
and overflowed and forced its way through all 
obstacles. It refused to be quenched. It per- 
sisted in spite of Hannibal, Missouri, or Elmira, 
New York, or the society of millionaires. It 
manifested itself in his latter-day cynicisms as 
224 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

unmistakably as in his earlier extravaganzas. 
It was a quality which one may dislike, but 
with which Mark Twain was abundantly en- 
dowed — humor. Grant that Mark Twain's 
genius was essentially humorous and his career 
becomes intelligible. I find it very much easier 
to think of him as a great humorist who suc- 
ceeded rather than as a great artist who failed. 

I remember when I read "Roughing It" with 
perfect delight. It was not that I considered it a 
work of great literary art or as an interpretation 
of anything in particular. I took it as an impro- 
visation, and I enjoyed it just as one enjoys 
charades among friends. There is no idea of 
comparing it with the standards of the profes- 
sional stage. 

I was a young man trying to preach the Gospel 
in the Miners' Union Hall in Gold Hill, which 
was a part of Virginia City. The Comstock Lode 
was not quite what it was when Mark Twain 
was there, but the Big Bonanza was not yet 
exhausted and the old life still went on. Wells 
Drury and Dan De Quille and the other literati 
of the "Virginia City Enterprise" and the "Gold 
Hill News" were doing their best to keep up the 
225 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

Mark Twain tradition. But after all their humor 
was a slender stream. They could not quite 
overcome all that was at enmity with joy. 

But in "Roughing It" we found the real thing 
and enough of it. Here was not an artistic re- 
production of life on the great Comstock Lode. 
It was the life itself. Its crudenesses, its extrav- 
agancies, its moral incongruities were all there. 
It was the pioneer spirit exhibiting itself in 
unabashed good-humor. I can imagine another 
kind of genius making another and better kind 
of book, but I cannot think of any one but Mark 
Twain being able to write that particular book. 
And I cannot shed tears over the thought that he 
was at that time inhibited from self-revelation. 
He was revealing himself — and a number of 
other people besides. 

And I remember years after hearing Mark 
Twain in a little club in Boston uttering those 
cynicisms which when put down in cold print 
seem cheerless. He was leaning against the door, 
as if at any moment he might depart, but was 
momentarily detained by a thought which had 
just occurred. His words were such as might 
have made the literal-minded weep, but we did 
226 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

not shed a tear. Instead we followed the hesi- 
tating confessions with smiling approval which 
now and then broke into laughter, and the 
laughter was not bitter but genial. Were we 
utterly undiscerning? Was Mark Twain's hu- 
mor a mere pose? 

I think not. It was the one gift which he had 
in an unusual degree. It intruded into his most 
serious moments. Even when he tried to ex- 
pound his pessimistic philosophy he was com- 
pelled by his native genius to do so humorously. 
And we who cared nothing for his philosophy 
enjoyed, as we had a perfect right to do, his 
manner of expounding it. 

There are plenty of examples of misdirected 
genius, but I am skeptical in regard to the theory 
of repressed genius. After all, the safest rule for 
estimating the quality and the quantity of any 
man's ability is the old one, "By his works shall 
you know him." 

The hypothetical work which his admiring 
friends insist that a man was capable of doing 
does not furnish an accurate standard for 
measurement. There was the late Lord Acton. 
He has been called one of the greatest historians 
227 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

of modern England. Perhaps he was. But I 
decline to accept his monumental History of 
Liberty as proof of it, for the simple reason that 
the work was never written. Lord Acton was a 
prodigious scholar, and collected the materials 
for his work in his great library. He had an ex- 
cellent style, a keen mind, a broad and tolerant 
mind; all these qualities may be seen in what he 
actually accomplished. 

But had he the kind of genius that could fuse 
all the materials which he had collected, and 
make the History of Liberty an inspiring narra- 
tive? Who can tell? The suspicious part is that 
Lord Acton continued to collect materials and 
never got aroused to the work of writing his 
History. I prefer to admire him for what he 
did rather than for what he hesitated to do. 

There was George Washington who might have 
written his own Farewell Address instead of get- 
ting Hamilton to write it for him. If he had 
been as successful in putting his ideas into words 
as he was in putting them into deeds he might 
have been the Edmund Burke of America. For a 
man of his greatness he was singularly diffident 
as to his power of literary expression. Was this 
228 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

due to some malign repressions in childhood? 
I do not know. Washington thought that 
Hamilton could write a better farewell address 
than he could, and he let him do it. I think that 
in this he showed his good sense. If a man is 
first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of 
his countrymen that is enough. 

I refuse to disquiet myself over hypothetical 
geniuses who never arrive at the goal which they 
never seriously attempted to reach. There are 
enough people who are not geniuses to use up all 
my sympathies. They are slenderly endowed 
for the struggle of existence and need to be 
protected and encouraged. 

But when once in a while there is born some 
one who has some special gift in a larger degree 
than the rest of us, I refuse to pity him, because 
he has not exhibited some other gift. It may 
seem hard-hearted, but I cannot feel compassion 
for him. He is really a lucky fellow and ought 
not to be pitied. Let him cultivate his own 
gift, and if it is so unusual that he cannot 
classify it at once, why, all the better. It lifts 
him out of the common. Having something 
unusual is not a cause for commiseration. I 
229 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

will not take up a collection for a millionaire, 
or subscribe for a wooden leg for the winner of 
the Marathon race. 

Nor, if I am convinced that a person has a 
real genius for something, would I querulously 
insist that he should be exhibiting it all the time. 
Nothing is so tiresome as "showing off." What 
if there should be long lapses of time in which he 
is as commonplace as the rest of us ? This only 
proves that he is healthy-minded and knows his 
own business better than we do. 

Ordinary abilities are easily regulated by our 
ordinary rules of behavior. We know what to 
expect. But the point to consider in dealing 
with genius is that we do not know what to ex- 
pect. We do not know where it will break out 
next. It is a happy accident which sometimes 
happens. Why it does n't happen oftener is 
something which we are not able to explain. We 
can only maintain an attitude of cheerful ex- 
pectancy. We hope to see something different 
from what we have seen before. 

I am no more disturbed over the hibernation 
of genius than over the hibernation of a bear. 
Bruin is a sensible fellow and knows what is 
230 



THE HIBERNATION OF GENIUS 

good for his own constitution. When cold 
weather comes he cannot like the wild geese take 
a voyage to the South. He does not wish to 
waste his time wandering through the deep 
snows of the woods looking for berries that are 
not there. He prefers a winter of content. So 
he seeks a spot under the rocks and curls up and 
goes to sleep till the temperature is more to his 
liking. When the time comes for taking up a 
more active career, he comes forth with a keen 
appetite and a new zest for life. 

When blinking in the unaccustomed sun- 
shine, all the critics of the woods gather about 
him to rebuke him for not making better use of 
his wintry opportunities. How many adventures 
he has missed! He whose shaggy coat proves 
that he was born to be the hero of mid-winter 
battles, he who is cousin to the arctic bear who 
reigns undisputed lord of an iceberg, has wasted 
his time sleeping in a six by ten cave. For shame! 

Bruin receives the taunts with imperturbable 
good-humor. He can afford to. For he is in 
prime condition for his day's work, while if he 
had followed their advice he would have been a 
nervous wreck. 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF 
LIBERALISM 

"The objection to their present method of 
attack against the trade of their enemies lies in 
the practical impossibility of employing sub- 
marines in the destruction of commerce without 
disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, 
justice, and humanity which all modern opinion 
regards as imperative." 

If I were asked to give in a single sentence the 
creed of modern liberalism I would turn to these 
words of President Wilson in his note of May 13, 
191 5, to the German Government. It is at once 
an affirmation of a faith commonly believed and 
a practical application of that faith to a con- 
crete situation. 

The belief was this. Humanity has with in- 
finite pains learned certain lessons, which are in 
these times embodied in certain rules of fairness, 
reason, and justice. These are recognized as 
being for the good of all, and universally appli- 
cable. Modern opinion regards these rules as 
232 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

imperative. Any person or nation wantonly 
defying these rules becomes an enemy of man- 
kind. One of these rules is that even in time of 
war the peaceful traders upon the sea have 
a right to due warning before their ship is de- 
stroyed. 

To this general statement the German Gov- 
ernment had already given a conditional assent. 
The rights of traders it had said would be re- 
spected so far as it was consistent with the con- 
ditions of modern warfare upon the seas. In 
its note of February 4 it had declared "all mer- 
chant vessels encountered in these waters will 
be destroyed even if it may not be possible 
always to save their crews and passengers." 
Under the old methods of warfare it was possible 
to discriminate between enemy and neutral 
vessels. But Germany had a newly invented 
instrument of destruction. The whole advan- 
tage of the submarine consisted in the fact that 
it could suddenly launch its torpedo without 
being seen. If it obeyed the ordinary rules of 
humanity it rendered itself liable to destruction. 
The hazards of naval warfare are such, said the 
representatives of the Kaiser, that "neutral 
233 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

vessels cannot always be prevented from suffer- 
ing from the attacks intended for enemy ships." 

To the statement of facts President Wilson 
gave assent. There was, he said, a practical 
impossibility of employing submarines in the 
destruction of commerce without violating the 
generally accepted rules of humanity. Then he 
drew the very simple conclusion, the submarine 
as a weapon for the destruction of commerce 
must be given up. 

"But if we do this we are likely to lose the 
war." 

To which came the answer: "If you do not 
do it you will lose the war, for you will have all 
the world fighting you. There are certain prin- 
ciples of human conduct which must be main- 
tained, no matter at what cost." 

We all remember the thrill which went around 
the world when the matter was thus put. It was 
felt that this was the moment of decision be- 
tween autocracy and liberalism. Was the hu- 
man conscience able to control the tools and 
weapons which human ingenuity had invented? 
Or must it be the helpless victim of its own 
fatal skill? Would men allow themselves to be 
234 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

ruled by any madman who was able to invent a 
machine for wholesale destruction? It was the 
liberal sentiment of the world which was aroused 
and had accepted the challenge. It was a grim 
battle for the supremacy of ideals over mech- 
anism. 

Five years after the issues were so clearly 
stated, the man of liberal principles asks hesi- 
tatingly, How goes the battle? The Kaiser has 
been dethroned, have the moral ideals of man- 
kind been vindicated? The free nations have 
"fought a good fight," but have they "kept the 
faith"? How much confidence in the funda- 
mental principles of liberalism has survived the 
conflict ? 

I think it is better to be frank and admit that 
at the present moment the forces of liberalism 
are disorganized and the ideals of liberalism 
obscured. The liberal has been caught between 
two fires. On the one side there is a kind of 
radicalism that is bitterly iconoclastic and 
fiercely destructive. It is ready to destroy all 
the tools of civilization and all its intricate 
contrivances for preserving social order, because 
it believes that these can only be used for the 
235 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

defense of the privileged classes. Only when the 
work of destruction is complete will it listen to 
those who wish to begin reconstruction. On the 
other hand there are those who, alarmed at the 
devastation that already has taken place, cling 
desperately to all the old ways of doing things. 
They will not hear those who plead for orderly 
progress, for it seems but one step nearer chaos. 

To the iconoclastic radical the liberal is a 
timid creature who in the hour of crisis weakens 
and retraces his steps. He is a Mr. Facing-Both- 
Ways, trying to make an impossible compromise. 
He is lacking both in foresight and insight. He 
has no real programme, and if he had he has not 
the courage to carry it through. He is a mere 
cumberer of the ground to be left behind by 
bolder spirits. 

To the reactionary the liberal is not only weak 
but wicked. The old text comes again. "Curse 
ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye 
bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they 
came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of 
the Lord against the mighty." The curse of 
Meroz comes to those who assume an attitude 
of neutrality, when they ought to take sides with 
236 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

their brethren. The bulwarks of ancient order 
are being undermined, the walls are being at- 
tacked. It is no time to talk of toleration or to 
suggest that there are two sides to any question. 
There is only one side that is right. Which side 
are you on? 

What is to become of old-fashioned liberalism 
in this crisis when it is beset by determined 
enemies who attack from both sides ? How is it 
to hold its middle ground between them? 

The fact that the question is so often put in 
this way is an evidence of the unpreparedness of 
liberalism. It indicates that many who profess 
and believe themselves to be liberals have 
allowed themselves to be maneuvered into an 
untenable position, where they are waging a 
purely defensive battle. 

The need of the hour is for a leadership based 
on a bolder kind of strategy. The real difficulty 
is not that liberalism has failed because some- 
thing better or stronger has taken its place, but 
that it has for the moment lost the initiative, and 
this initiative must be regained. 

The liberal has been waiting for the radical to 
make the next move which he will then attempt 
237 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

to repel. He is afraid of going too far. In this 
very appearance of anxiety he acts the part 
of a reactionary. He does n't go forward with 
boldness, nor backward with determination. 

But let him take the initiative and he will 
be surrounded by a great multitude of liberal- 
minded people. Speaking for them he will say: 

"We liberals have nothing to apologize for, 
we have no middle ground to defend. We are 
not unduly attached to the past, nor are we 
blindly confident of the future. But we are re- 
sponsible for the best use of our own faculties in 
the present. We are also responsible for the best 
use of all the inventions, customs, traditions, ap- 
pliances, and institutions that have come down 
to us from the past. We look upon these things, 
not as treasures of which we are custodians, but 
as tools to be used in our day's work. They are 
the means which are always to be subordinated 
to the ends which we have in view. We insist 
that the true end is the welfare of all of us and 
not merely of a part of us. 

"We believe in evolution. This when applied 
to human affairs gives us hope for the modifica- 
tion of many things which at first seem hostile to 
238 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

our ideals. Using them for a higher purpose they 
are themselves transformed. 

"Law in its crudest form may be, as the phil- 
osophical anarchist insists, only the imposition 
of the will of the strong upon the weak. Even 
to this day there are many laws which have 
their sanction, not in essential justice, but in 
force. 

"Nevertheless, we do not agree with the 
anarchist that the abolition of law would be in 
the interest of the weak. We prefer to take the 
long road that humanity has actually followed. 
It is to use the law for the protection of the 
weak against the strong. This has been done 
through an endless series of beneficent modifica- 
tions of primitive practice. We believe that we 
can trace a distinct line of progress, and the end 
is not yet. There are unjust laws to be repealed, 
and the liberal agitates for their repeal. There 
are new and more equitable laws that should be 
put upon the statute book. It is his business to 
work for such progressive legislation." 

Even the fundamental law of the State must 
be tested continually. The constitution is but a 
means to an end. If it forbids something which 
239 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

the majority of the people think essential to 
their welfare, it must be amended — at least so 
say those who are constitutionally minded. 

The liberal listens to heated discussions about 
wage slavery. He does not take a middle ground. 
He goes at once to what to him is the root evil. 
It is slavery. Here is something which he hates 
with all his heart. Liberalism has been an age- 
long struggle for the emancipation of humanity. 

When the liberal uses the word "slavery" he 
has in his mind a picture of the slave properly so 
called. He is a mere chattel, a thing to be bought 
and sold, used for a time and when worn out 
flung aside to perish. He thinks of slavery as 
it has actually existed in Africa and America. 
The chains are literal and so is the driver's whip. 

And when he uses the word "freedom" he has 
a picture of the free man properly so called. He 
is not the man on the street who only thinks he 
is free because his chains are not visible. He 
murmurs to himself: 

"How happy is he born or taught 
Who serveth not another's will, 
Whose armor is his honest thought 
And simple truth his utmost skill." 

240 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

He thinks of a commonwealth of such free men, 
and resolves to work for its establishment. But 
he knows that this achievement is too great for 
any one party, nor is it a matter of a day. The 
battle against slavery must be waged contin- 
ually and without compromise of the ultimate 
ideal. 

Serfdom, Feudalism, Democracy, Socialism, 
Communism are tested by the same question — 
How far do they take one on the road from 
primitive slavery toward ideal freedom? Each 
one marks a certain advance from primitive 
slavery. So long as it remained a mere theory 
each seemed to offer a final solution. As each 
one has been tried it is seen that it does not 
satisfy fully the human demand. 

Does Democracy of itself make men free? 
When Thomas Paine wrote the " Rights of Man " 
the ardent revolutionist thought that it did. 
Now men look at the United States of America 
and count the multitudes who have not achieved 
freedom, though they have a right to vote. 
Communism is a synonym of liberty in Utopia. 
But the ardent denouncer of wage slavery is on 
the defensive when his attention is called to the 
241 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

degree of freedom enjoyed by the working-men 
of Russia. It is evident that there is more than 
one kind of slavery. 

Under Capitalism and under Socialism there 
will be those who are indifferent to the rights of 
the individual. Reformers talk of "the system" 
which crushes out liberty. By this they mean 
the particular system which is dominant in their 
particular community. "It is the fault of the 
system," they say in attacking the evils of the 
time, and the remedy is to change the system. 

But the liberal, if he is to retain the moral 
initiative, must have a more thoroughgoing 
philosophy than this. He must be prepared to 
pass judgment, not on one system, but on all 
systems, and to hold each strictly accountable 
for its actual results. He must be realistic and 
not sentimental both in his attachments and his 
repulsions. Feudalism, Capitalism, Democracy, 
Socialism, Communism, these are names for 
systems which are on trial. How far does any 
one of them serve the needs of men and help in 
developing human welfare? The liberal is will- 
ing that each should have a fair trial, but he is 
not willing to allow any one of them to tyran- 
242 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

nize over him. He will not submit to the idea 
that the man must fit the system; he insists that 
the system shall be flexible, enough to fit the 
growing man. This he knows will require end- 
less readjustment. 

The liberal's opposition to despotism is not 
occasional, it is ceaseless. He is as much opposed 
to it when exercised in behalf of his own party or 
country as when exercised by his enemies. He 
uses the same test which President Wilson ap- 
plied to the submarine. He says, "Your system 
may be the result of much effort, it may be ever 
so logical, but if it hampers the free development 
of the mind and if it shocks the enlightened 
conscience, it must be modified." If it cannot be 
modified so as to serve our needs, it must be re- 
jected. We are disposed to be patient and to 
leave room for experiment, but we are insistent 
in regard to our main contention. 

In all this the liberal is true to his own philos- 
ophy which is based on the idea of evolution. 
He stands sharply opposed to the destructive 
radical and the stand-pat conservative. They 
both take for granted a mechanical analogy 
which he utterly rejects. 
243 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

They think of our institutions as a house 
which we have builded. The materials of the 
house are different from ourselves. They are 
passive under our hands. The bricks stay where 
we put them. They are not subject to sudden 
panics or enthusiasms. We do not have to pro- 
pitiate them in any way or consider them idio- 
syncrasies. And the mortar, if it is made right, 
sticks. When it is set, that is the end of it. The 
architect can calculate the strength of his ma- 
terials, and we hold him responsible. If the 
building turns out altogether different from his 
plans he cannot lay the blame on the timbers. 
They do not change their minds — because 
they have no minds. 

The discussions on social questions often take 
for granted a state of things as simple as that of 
the tearing-down of an old house and the build- 
ing of a new. Our inherited institutions are a 
house which is obviously inconvenient, and in 
some respects unsanitary. The family has out- 
grown it. Shall we tear it down and build a 
new one which shall be more commodious ? Or 
shall we patch the roof, and make an addi- 
tion here and there, while careful not to dis- 
244 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

turb any of the associations that have gathered 
around it? 

When we put the matter in this way the fam- 
ily divides according to temperament. Those 
who love the picturesque and have strong at- 
tachment to the old house, prefer to suffer in- 
convenience rather than make a radical change. 
The older members of the family have the resist- 
ance of inertia. It will last their day and they 
don't want to be worried. 

On the other hand, those who are ambitious 
and vigorous insist that if we are going to do 
anything at all we should make a thorough job 
of it. Let us tear down the house at once. Then 
when we have cleared the ground our architect 
can go ahead with his plans. There is no economy 
in piecemeal alterations. It is better for us all 
to camp out for a while. The fresh air will do us 
good. Moreover, in order to save time let us 
keep the immediate work of destruction sepa- 
rate from the work of reconstruction. We are 
agreed about the first, we might quarrel about 
the second. Sufficient unto the day is the evil 
thereof. Let us sign a contract with a house- 
wrecking firm, and put them to work at once. 
245 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

If they do a good job we might trust them to 
build the new house for us, or if they have n't 
any architect we might develop some good ideas 
of our own which would be useful when the time 
comes. 

Which side shall we take ? I confess that if our 
institutions were made and unmade like a house, 
I should incline to the side of the radicals. I 
should prefer to clear the ground and rebuild 
according to a rational plan, rather than patch 
up a dwelling whose timbers have rotted and 
whose foundations are inadequate. 

But as a liberal I utterly deny that either al- 
ternative is possible. Neither radicals nor con- 
servatives have the power which they claim. 

You cannot clear the ground, because you 
are the ground. You cannot stand off like an 
architect and plan a new building, for you are 
the building, and the processes of destruction 
and reconstruction are going on all the time. 
You cannot wait for new materials, for there 
are n't any new materials. Every atom has 
existed from the beginning. There are only 
new forms continually produced by the ancient 
causes. 

246 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

We wildly exaggerate the power of particular 
men to destroy or to build institutions that 
would conform to their theory. The moment 
they enter into the field of affairs the logical 
completeness of their plans is gone. They be- 
come opportunists in spite of themselves. The 
institution which they upheld represents only so 
much of their thought as their followers are 
willing and able to accept. 

Lenin is as truly an opportunist as Lloyd 
George. He can put in force only so much of 
his communistic theory as the Russian people, 
being what they are, allow. The more Utopian 
part of his programme must be postponed till 
the time when the conditions are more favor- 
able* Suppose to-morrow he were to attempt to 
force all his theories upon the Russian peasants; 
his rule would be at an end. Indeed, no one can 
be dictator without an instinctive perception of 
the limitation of his own powers. He may go to 
the edge, but he knows enough not to go be- 
yond. 

The good sense of the Popes is seen in the 
fact that they never exercise their infallibility 
to the utmost. They wisely leave the ordinary 
247 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

believer a wide margin for the exercise of private 
judgment. 

No reformer has ever yet succeeded in work- 
ing a clean sweep of existing institutions and in- 
herited propensities. And no reactionary party 
has ever been able after a great revolutionary 
war to reestablish the status quo ante helium. 
There may be a pretense of doing so, but it de- 
ceives nobody. 

Our problem is not so simple as that of the 
householder who when he pulls down one house 
can build another. The real analogy is not with 
the house, but with the householder himself. 
He is obviously a very imperfect creature. How 
can he be improved so that he may be a health- 
ier, happier, and wiser man than he is at present? 
However much fault we may find with his 
present condition and however radical our ideas 
of what he ought to be, there is one plan which 
we consider inadmissible, and that is to kill him 
and then resurrect him. We reject this plan, not 
because it is too bold, but because we know that 
it won't work. As practical persons we can see 
that by use of proper means we can go as far as 
the preliminary homicide, but we are sure we 
248 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

should fail in performing the miracle necessary 
to complete the transaction. In order to bring 
about the man's regeneration it is necessary for 
us to keep him alive. This requires that we 
cooperate with the vital forces already at work, 
and which it is well for us to know something 
about. 

The liberal programme requires the coopera- 
tion of vast numbers of persons of different 
traditions and ways of thinking. Their reac- 
tions upon one another are quite essential to the 
carrying-out of the plan. As long as there is life 
there is hope of improvement. This applies to 
all sorts of persons and institutions. The prob- 
lem is to find the vital principle and to develop 
all its possibilities. 

The liberal in religion sees many religious in- 
stitutions which offend him. They seem carica- 
tures of what he considers to be true. But it is 
a futile waste of effort for him to attack one or 
the other of them unless he asks, What is the 
religious sentiment? Back of all superstitions 
and all arrogant 1 ecclesiasticism he finds certain 
native reverences which he sees to be good and 
full of promise. To keep these alive and to pro- 
249 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

mote their natural growth is his final business. 
If they can be developed into strength, they 
will eventually overcome the ugly things which 
have usurped their place. Bigotry and fanati- 
cism are parasitical growths that feed upon the 
religious sentiment and tend to destroy it. The 
remedy is a larger and truer conception of what 
religion is. 

Said Jonathan Edwards, when discoursing on 
his favorite theme of disinterested virtue: "He 
that closes with religion only that it may serve 
his turn will close with no more of it than he 
imagines will serve his turn. But he that closes 
with religion for its own excellent and lovely 
nature closes with all that has that nature: he 
that embraces religion for its own sake embraces 
the whole of religion." 

There we have a principle that carries us 
far — much farther than Edwards himself was 
willing to go. Taken historically it means that 
one who embraces religion for its own excellent 
and lovely nature is on the lookout for its man- 
ifestations in the most unlikely places. One 
never knows beforehand where it will appear; 
it is just as likely to appear among our foes as 
250 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

among our friends. The liberal attitude is that 
exhibited by the good clergyman of whom 
Thomas Fuller says, "He had a kindness for all 
such as had any goodness in themselves. He 
had, as I may say, a broad-chested soul, favor- 
able to such as differed with him." 

When in the field of practical statesmanship 
such a broad-chested soul appears he has a great 
advantage. Being free from egoism he can use 
friends and foes alike for the fulfillment of the 
great ends which he sees. It is not necessary 
that they should be of his party or even of his 
nationality. It is a matter of complete indiffer- 
ence to him whether they admire him. He is no 
more dependent on their applause than the great 
physician is dependent on the passing moods of 
his patient.. The physician is cooperating not so 
much with the conscious will of his patient as 
with his metabolism. So long as this is satisfac- 
tory he does not mind how much the convales- 
cent grumbles. 

Men of first-rate ability and great energy who 
have also the liberal spirit have been very rare. 
When they do appear they are equal to any 
251 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

crisis that arises. The breadth of their vision 
does not interfere with the precision of their 
action. Self-seekers are instinctively afraid of 
the man who is not concerned about his own 
interests or his own reputation. Disinterested- 
ness gives a public man very much the same 
advantage that belongs to unscrupulousness. 

It increases the number of things he may pos- 
sibly do in an emergency. It's never safe to 
press him too hard. 

Clarendon declared that John Hampden was 
the most dangerous revolutionary of his time 
because he claimed nothing for himself. He had 
in mind certain fundamental changes which 
could only be brought about by the successive 
efforts of many different men. So long as affairs 
were moving in the direction which he approved, 
Hampden did not interfere. He claimed no 
glory for himself. He often seemed mildly sur- 
prised when, after a protracted debate in which 
all had freely expressed their views, Parliament 
came around to his opinion. "He was of that 
rare affability and temper in debate and of that 
seeming humility and submission of judgment, 
as if he brought no opinions with him, but a 
252 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

desire of information, and yet he had so subtle 
a way of interrogating and, under the notion of 
doubts, insinuating his objections, that he left 
his opinions with those from whom he pretended 
to learn and receive them. . . . He possessed the 
most absolute spirit of popularity, that is the 
most absolute faculties to govern the people, of 
any man I ever knew." 

Thomas Jefferson writes: "I sat with General 
Washington in the Legislature of Virginia and 
with Dr. Franklin in Congress. I never heard 
either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor 
on any but the main point that was to decide 
the question. They laid their shoulders to the 
great points knowing that the little ones would 
take care of themselves." 

Many a man who has had a great point has 
lost it because of the rigidity of his own mind. 
He has not had the grace to yield little points to 
other men. Elasticity is a quality which belongs 
to the strong. I think we grant too much to the 
lovers of the picturesque, in acquiescing in the 
idea that the great and beneficent changes have 
been brought about by fanatics rather than by 
men of liberal minds. The fanatic may have his 
253 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

place in the destruction of an old order, but he is 
powerless to bring in a better order. 

In these days when people are telling us that 
liberalism is a failure, Mr. Trevelyan has done us 
a good service in giving us the life of a typical 
liberal, who "made good." Lord Grey of the 
Reform Bill was one who not only fought a good 
fight, but kept the faith. He was born ten years 
before the American Declaration of Independ- 
ence; as a young man he boldly took the liberal 
side in the English discussions over the French 
Revolution. When the cry of Jacobinism was 
raised against all who proposed any changes 
in the British Constitution, Grey moved for 
Parliamentary reform. In 1792 Grey organized 
the association called "The Friends of the 
People." It was not till 1832 that as Prime 
Minister he carried the Reform Bill, which 
marked the triumph of the greatest peaceful 
revolution in English History. It was a long, 
hard struggle, but it succeeded. And Grey was 
not less heroic because throughout it all he was 
sane. 

The true liberal is not easily discouraged. 
When the battle goes against him he knows that 
254 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

all the reserves have not yet come into action. 
Many of the forces which at the moment seem 
hostile may be thrown upon the right side when 
the hour of decision comes. Many a great re- 
form has at last been carried through by the 
party which had most violently opposed it; for 
the Spirit of Progress is no respecter of persons 
and uses all kinds of men for its instruments. 

These considerations give to the convinced 
liberal imperturbability in the hour of defeat. 
He is conscious that the ultimate triumph of his 
principles does not depend upon any chance en- 
counter. But in order to snatch victory from 
defeat he needs to have the spirit of gallantry. 
The gallant soldier is not only sustained by the 
hope of final victory, but he is moved by an in- 
tense desire to win the immediate contest in 
which he himself is engaged. He throws himself 
into each little skirmish with as much ardor as if 
it were to decide the campaign. It is a necessary 
action and demands all the energy that he 
has. 

The gallant liberal accepts the challenge of 
each day in the same spirit. Some specific step 
in advance is to be made. He is aware that it is 
255 



i 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

only one step along the way in which humanity- 
must go. But it is in the right direction. Taking 
that step confidently and courageously he is 
doing his part in the great onward movement. 
He feels the thrill of new comradeship. Each 
particular plan for betterment is lifted out of its 
littleness, and becomes a part of the worship of 
the Best. There is a Spirit that 

"None can bewilder. 
Whose eyes pierce 
The Universe, 
Pathfinder, road builder, 
Mediator, royal giver 
Rightly seeing, rightly seen, 
Of joyful and transparent mien. 
'Tis a sparkle passing 
From each to each, from thee to me, 
To and fro perpetually, 
Sharing all, daring all, 
Levelling, displacing 
Each obstruction, it unites 
Equals remote and seeming opposites 
And ever and forever Love 
Delights to build a road." 

There are times when the men who have been 

our leaders grow discouraged. The old ways 

of doing necessary things become increasingly 

difficult. Ancient customs of thinking and act- 

256 



THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF LIBERALISM 

ing are discredited. We have come to the end of 
the road. 

Then we look to those who have not lost their 
sense of direction, and who seeing the distant 
city of their hopes delight to build a road to it. 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 1 

A printed page containing the most familiar 
words becomes unintelligible if there is no 
punctuation or spacing to indicate where a sen- 
tence or paragraph begins or ends. The eye 
wanders over the monotonous wilderness of let- 
ters, through which there is no path by which 
reason may travel. In trying to take all in at 
once, we comprehend nothing. And the sequence 
of events is equally unintelligible, unless we have 
some way of punctuating time. History is an 
endless maze of unrelated happenings, until we 
divide it up into brief portions in which we dis- 
cern a certain unity of purpose. He who would 
attempt to expound the meaning of what takes 
place must follow the example of the preacher, 
and announce plainly, "Here beginneth the first 
lesson"; and he must be equally circumstantial 
in declaring in due time, "Here endeth the first 
lesson." 

1 This essay was written at the close of the Great War and 
printed in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1919. 

258 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

Of course he knows that in another and in a 
cosmic sense there is no ending and there is no 
beginning to the stream of Time. But for our 
purpose of understanding, we must divide time 
into portions which our minds can grasp. We 
talk of the beginning and end of an era, and 
adjust our minds to the peculiar task which each 
era presents. 

We are all conscious that we are living through 
one of those critical times which will be marked 
in history as epoch-making. The world will not 
be the same as that with which we were familiar 
before the war. 

But when does the new era begin? There are 
many persons waiting in a more or less skeptical 
attitude for its formal inauguration. During the 
war they refused to think of anything else but 
the grim contest itself. There was nothing to do 
but to "carry on." And now that hostilities have 
ended as suddenly as they began, they still see 
nothing but confusion. The war has ceased, but 
the new order has not yet arisen. These idealists 
who look for a new era find it difficult to believe 
that it has already come. Civilization seems to 
them to be in a bad way, and in dealing with 
259 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

it they assume what the old-fashioned family 
physician used to call "a good bedside manner." 
Such people look regretfully to the past, and 
apprehensively at the immediate present. They 
do not realize that the course of events has al- 
ready outrun their hopes. 

When does a day begin? Different nations 
have had their own methods of punctuating 
time. Our calendar follows the Romans in be- 
ginning the day at midnight; for all practical 
purposes we reckon it from sunrise to sunrise. 
The Hebrews, however, began their new day 
at sunset. In the story of creation we are told, 
"And the evening and the morning were the 
first day." 

This Hebrew habit of beginning the day at 
sunset has survived even to our own time in 
regard to the day of rest. The whole significance 
of Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night" is lost if 
we forget that, to the Scotch Presbyterian, Satur- 
day night was a part of the Sabbath. The week's 
cares were thrown aside when the peasant saw, 
in the evening shadows, the beginning of the 
Lord's Day. 

I remember hearing Henry Ward Beecher tell 
269 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

of his experience as a boy, to whom the Puritan 
Sabbath was a tiresome interlude between days 
of glorious play. With his brothers he would 
stand on a hilltop in Litchfield to watch the sun 
go down. When it sank, there would go up a 
joyous shout, and life would begin again with all 
its pleasant intensity. And from the parsonage 
Lyman Beecher would emerge to join their 
sports. 

Small boys always begin their holidays "the 
night before." They know that the glorious 
Fourth of July is, and of right ought to be, 
in full blast at least twelve hours before their 
elders are ready for the first firecracker; and 
Christmas Eve is rightly conceived as an integral 
part of Christmas Day. 

The fact is that all creative days begin in the 
evening, and creative spirits always anticipate 
the course of events. They do not wait for the 
dawn of a new era. They resolutely begin the 
new era at the moment when they see that the 
old era has ended. The darkness gathers, but it 
is a time, not for vain repining over that which 
has passed away, but for eager planning for that 
which must take its place. There is a quick 
261 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

transfer of interests to new problems which re- 
late themselves to the new period. 

The triumph of good health is in the merging 
of the preceding evening into the day for which 
it is the preparation. How hearty is the Shake- 
spearean greeting, "Good-night till it be mor- 
row." There is no appreciable interval between 
good-night and good-morrow. 

Milton's shepherd, in "Lycidas," sang his 

plaintive lay till the sun sank behind the western 

hills, and then 

"... he twitched his mantle blue 
To-morrow for fresh woods and pastures new." 

This buoyancy of spirit which dwells con- 
fidently in the morrow, even before the dawn 
has come, is natural to Americans. It is a part 
of the national temperament. It has been de- 
veloped through contact with the vast resources 
of a continent which has yielded its treasures to 
adventurous industry. 

It was this spirit, dominant in time of peace, 
which manifested itself when the nation entered 
into the stern business of war. It was not readily 
understood by those more familiar with Eu- 
ropean than with American habits of thought 
262 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

and feeling. They feared that the masses of the 
people might be the victims of their too easy 
faith in "manifest destiny." Their will to win 
and their ability to endure might be impaired 
by their confidence that final victory was in- 
evitable. In their anxiety to improve the morale 
of the people, the directors of opinion were 
tempted to appeal to motives of fear or political 
hatred. They sometimes prophesied dire things, 
or scolded over national shortcomings. They 
betrayed a nervous anxiety lest America might 
not awake. 

In the meantime, the real America had awak- 
ened, but in its own way. It had awakened, not 
as a neurasthenic awakes to a vague and be- 
numbing sense of helplessness in the presence of 
disaster, but as a strong man awakes to the 
magnitude of his necessary work. 

When America entered the war, it was with no 
intention of restoring the status quo ante helium. 
The enormous sacrifices involved could be jus- 
tified only by creating conditions under which 
such a tragedy as the world was experiencing 
could not be repeated. To win the war meant 
more than the defeat of the Hohenzollerns. The 
263 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

Kaiser stood in the same relation to the world- 
conflagration in which Mrs. O'Leary's cow 
stood to the Chicago fire. He had kicked over 
the lamp — that was all. When this conflagra- 
tion is over, said the common-sense American, 
we must have a fireproof or, at least, a slow- 
burning civilization. 

Whoever during the past four years has had 
the privilege of addressing popular audiences on 
the problems of war and peace must have no- 
ticed that the effective appeal has never been to 
war-lust or fear, but to the common sense of 
people who had accepted their responsibility for 
a reorganization of the world along the lines of 
democratic freedom. Autocracy had been tried 
and found wanting. The Tsar and the Kaiser 
were anachronisms and must get out of the way. 
There was also the acceptance of the fact that 
nationalism in the old restricted sense had had 
its day. The nation must acknowledge its ob- 
ligation to a new international order. 

The power of President Wilson has come from 
the fact that he has voiced the aspirations of 
great masses of the people rather than the in- 
terests of any political party or social group. 
264 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

He has expressed what has been long in the 
minds of those who seek a peace that shall be 
just and permanent. 

The historian, when he tells the story of the 
beginning of the new era, will tell of the way in 
which America, caught unprepared for war, had 
in feverish haste to organize and equip armies on 
a scale before undreamed of. This great achieve- 
ment was rendered possible only because the 
Allied fleets and armies stood between her and 
her foes. America had to do in a year what 
Germany had methodically accomplished in a 
generation. 

But even if there was unpreparedness in a 
strictly military sense, there was a preparedness 
of another kind which was one of the great sur- 
prises of the war. Prussia had been organizing 
for war. America had, with equal intensity, been 
organizing for peace. Practical idealists, with 
the equipment of modern science, had been 
transforming commerce, agriculture, manufac- 
ture, education, philanthropy." New standards 
of efficiency had been recognized. Coopera- 
tion had been preached. Religion itself was be- 
ing reorganized, and the churches, ashamed of 
265 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

being considered refuges from the evil of the 
world, were becoming centers of spiritual indus- 
try. American big business was being touched 
with idealism, and it was coming to be seen that 
the biggest business for big men was to make 
the world a fit place for human beings to live in. 
And men and women, big of brain and of heart, 
were undertaking the job. They were no longer 
open to the taunt which the furies in Shelley's 
peom hurled at the timid good: 

"They dare not devise good for all mankind, 
And yet they know not that they do not dare." 

The daring pioneers of the new era were busy 
devising good for the twentieth century. In the 
midst of their altruistic dreams, the war came. 
For a moment they were stunned, as it seemed 
that the world was reeling back into the abyss 
of utter barbarism. But quickly they rallied 
and found in the sudden crisis the opportunity 
to do, in a large and thorough way, and with the 
power of great masses, what they had been at- 
tempting through small experiments. They saw 
that the day of small things was over, and that 
the big things now were the practicable things. 

The one thing which these people of the new 
266 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

era had in common was their intolerance of what 
are called necessary evils. They had studied 
these evils in their origin and growth, and had 
convinced themselves that most of them were 
preventable. They existed only because we had 
been too lazy and selfish to deal with them in a 
large, effective, public way. They began to ad- 
dress the conscience in a new tone of author- 
ity derived from first-hand information. Their 
definition of sin had a more than Puritanic 
severity. Sin is a preventable evil, cheerfully 
and piously accepted and acquiesced in. Right- 
eousness is the courageous and skillful coopera- 
tion with others to discover and abolish unneces- 
sary evils. 

The men of the new era had been convinced 
that among the unnecessary evils which must be 
abolished was war itself. As a mode of settling 
international disputes, it had been discredited. 
The invention of new instruments of destruction 
made it too horrible to endure. The only ques- 
tion was how to get rid of it. The appeal to 
reason had already been made. Then came the 
tremendous onslaught of Prussian militarism, 
with its brutal negation of all moral ideals. It 
267 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

was seen at once that all talk of peace was idle 
so long as this menace existed. Those peace- 
makers who were not sentimentalists quickly 
realized the nature of the emergency. In the 
most literal sense they must engage in a war 
against war. 

While upon the battle-lines of Europe the 
Allied armies were pressing for a military deci- 
sion, there was another army at home and in the 
camps pressing for a moral decision. It was an 
army of trained social workers, equipped with 
modern knowledge, and determined that the 
true ends of the warfare should be gained. They 
were intelligently organized to counteract as far 
as possible the evils which hitherto had followed 
in the train of war. 

What have been the natural consequences of 
past wars, even those which have been waged for 
the holiest causes? Camp diseases have been 
accepted as acts of God. Often more soldiers 
have died of disease than of wounds. Gross im- 
morality on the part of hosts of young men re- 
leased from the restraints of home has been ac- 
quiesced in as a part of the price the nation pays 
for its military triumph. At home we must re- 
268 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

sign ourselves to a state of general demoraliza- 
tion which will last for years after the war. 
There must inevitably be financial irregularities, 
shameless profiteering, a lowering of family 
standards, labor unrest, an increase of juvenile 
delinquency, and the vast, silent misery of those 
whose breadwinners have sacrificed themselves 
for their country. 

It has always been so. The glory of war is for 
the few, but the multitudes who have borne the 
misery have been forgotten. These maimed and 
ruined little people of the world stand by the 
wayside murmuring, " Is it nothing to you, all ye 
that pass by?" And the great ones of the earth 
answer coldly, " It is nothing. The country and 
the cause are saved; nothing else matters." Did 
not Napoleon, when the remnants of the Grand 
Army strewed the snowy roads of Russia, send 
back the complacent message, "The Emperor's 
health is good " ? 

But the men of the new era declared that, 
while necessary suffering must be accepted as 
the legitimate price of victory, we must not ac- 
quiesce in unnecessary suffering, and we must 
put the same degree of energy and skill into the 
269 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

work of prevention that we put into every other 
part of the conduct of the war. To accept these 
evils without a struggle is to acknowledge our- 
selves to be defeatists. These domestic evils and 
this vast moral misery are no more part of the 
price than gangrene is the price of heroic surgery. 
Gangrene after the operation is only an evidence 
of the ignorance and incompetence of the sur- 
geon. The leaders of the new America were de- 
termined that, if there must be war, it should 
be a clean war carried on under antiseptic con- 
ditions. 

I have emphasized the fact that we have al- 
ready entered upon a new period in the world's 
history, for only in the appreciation of the new- 
ness of the organizations that need our help can 
we do our part effectively. It was no new thing 
for kind-hearted people to do what they could to 
alleviate the horrors of war. The new thing is 
that the nation itself organized this work, and 
demanded our full cooperation as a part of our 
patriotic duty. It was resolved not to wait till 
the end of the war before it began the work of 
reconstruction. It said to every one of us, "Let 
us begin now." In order that we might waste 
270 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

no time, it provided, what had never been done 
before, an army of trained leaders to direct the 
effort of volunteers. 

In the New Testament parable the idlers in 
the market-place apologized for their idleness by 
saying, "No man hath hired us." The United 
States Government was determined that no 
citizen might justly offer that excuse. If you 
wished to be of service, you were shown some- 
thing useful that you could do. There was a 
job for every one. And the jobs that were 
offered us were not merely "for the duration 
of the war." A new phrase was used in offi- 
cial announcements: "for the duration of the 
emergency." 

We now see that the emergency does not 
necessarily end with the war. Among the lead- 
ers in the work of reconstruction there is a sense 
of responsibility for the nation's defenders. 
The welfare of the returned soldier and his 
family must not be left to chance. The com- 
munity to which he returns must be made fit for 
him to live in. Thus have "war-aims" been 
broadened till they become plans for a new 
society. 

271 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

One can see all this by studying the work of a 
great organization like the American Red Cross. 
It has been dealing with the emergencies created 
by the Great War, but it has been content with 
no temporary makeshifts. One feels that he is 
watching the beginning of a new and ordered 
national life. What a multitude of new activ- 
ities, directed by expert intelligence! It is the 
effective organization of the goodwill of the 
community. 

Not the least of its functions is to save pa- 
triotism from going to waste in mere jingoistic 
sentiment. It gives definite direction to the 
citizen who longs to serve his country. The 
soldier at the front knows that he is doing his 
duty; but how can one who must stay at home 
serve the common cause ? His only idea of serv- 
ice is apt to be vague and imitative. 

I came across the works of one of the "New 
Poets" of a former generation, which reminds 
me of the state of mind into which many people 
fall when trying to reach an exalted state of feel- 
ing through the process of imitation. James 
Eliot, the bard of Guilford, Vermont, published 
in 1797 a little volume which contains lines 
272 






ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

written in Marietta, Ohio, in praise of that in- 
fant settlement. The poet begins thus: 

"Hail, Queen of Rivers, Hail, Columbian Nile, 
Along thy beauteous bank I freely roam 
And view your cloud-capped mountains which awhile 
Will yet seclude me from my native home. 
Stupendous monument of power divine, 
The muse explores thy solitary height, 
By fancy led thy craggy cliffs to climb, 
And then to Orient realms extend thy flight." 

The reader wonders why he did not see those 
craggy cliffs and cloud-capped mountains when 
he visited Marietta. But Eliot, who was a truth- 
ful soul though poetic, explains in a footnote 
that, though these heights were not actually 
visible from Marietta, he felt justified in putting 
them in as enhancing the beauty of his verses. 

As the would-be poet was enraptured by the 
grandeur of mountains that were not there, and 
was oblivious to the beauties of the real Mari- 
etta, so it is possible for the patriot, in his con- 
templation of imaginative duties, to fail to per- 
form those that really belong to him. He is 
ready for heroics, and he would scale the "top- 
pling crags of Duty, if he could find them. In 
the meantime" a multitude of prosaic things 
273 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

needs to be done. He is likely to be oblivious to 
these things unless they are pointed out to him, 
and he is shown their relation to a great heroic 
end. 

Now this is precisely what has been done dur- 
ing the Great War. The ordinary citizen has had 
his duty brought home to him and presented 
realistically. That is the meaning of Home 
Service. It is the organization of forces which 
have heretofore been wasted. It has been far- 
reaching in its scope and yet intimate in its ap- 
peal. It has brought into action a vast army of 
volunteer workers, who have submitted to dis- 
cipline under trained leaders. 

The individual who had hitherto been think- 
ing in terms of his personal interest or local 
pride is made to feel that he is a part of a great 
nation and must subordinate everything to the 
nation's welfare. He learns to say "we," and 
to give the word a larger meaning than he had 
ever done before. Taking up a modest task, he 
has felt the thrill that comes to the soldier when 
he enlists in the army. The necessary routine is 
lifted out of its pettiness by the greatness of its 
purpose. During this war hundreds of thousands 
274 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

of persons have for the first time learned the joy 
and the power of cooperative effort. 

When we think of the new day that is at hand, 
we speak of the return of the young soldiers and 
of the effect of their experience. But we must 
also think of the experience gained by the mil- 
lions who have not crossed the seas, but who 
have not been idle spectators of the conflict. 
You may meet them in every village of the land. 
They are people of the new era. They have 
learned lessons in war-time which are to be ap- 
plied in the years to come. 

Here are no non-combatant critics, no easy- 
chair strategists. These people know how dif- 
ficult and vast the work is, and they have an 
instinctive sympathy with those who are in 
places of authority and responsibility. They 
measure everything by the actual results. If 
they are discouraged, they keep the fact to 
themselves. They speak and act cheerfully be- 
cause they know that cheerfulness is a power, 
and fretfulness a contagious disease. To be 
petulant is a kind of sabotage. It is to put sand 
in the delicate machinery. 

And there are personal jealousies, and petty 
275 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

ambitions, that are tabooed by members of this 
fellowship of patriotic duty. They have learned 
that when a committee is appointed to do a 
work, it is criminal to spend precious time and 
nervous energy in ministering to the egotism of 
some member of the committee. There is some- 
thing important to be done. It is of no conse- 
quence who does it, or who gets the credit. 

Every group of war-workers has been a 
school for the study and practice of voluntary 
cooperation. Here, on the evening of the new 
day, people have been preparing for the larger 
and happier work to follow. As they have been 
working together, they have been thinking to- 
gether — thinking perhaps more than they have 
been talking. They have been learning from 
their own mistakes. One might compile a list 
of "Don'ts." But perhaps the most effective 
would be, not the didactic "don't" of warning, 
but the "don't" of interrogation. The appeal is 
to the experience of the great army of patriotic 
workers. 

Don't you see the opportunity for a new and 
better civilization which may take the place of 
that which has been so sadly shattered? 
276 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

Don't you see that Anarchy is as grave a peril 
as that of Prussian militarism, and that, to es- 
cape it, the free nations must have wisdom and 
prudence as well as warlike courage? 

Don't you see that what has to be done has to 
be done quickly, and that the deliberation which 
is right in quiet days must in times of revolution 
give way to quick and sure decisions, loyally 
carried out? 

Don't you see that personal and local con- 
siderations have to be subordinated to national 
and international policy? 

Don't you see that the future is to be deter- 
mined, not by the wise and prudent persons who, 
detached from the present struggle, wait for the 
Future? It is to be determined by the people 
who bravely and cheerfully and skillfully are 
dealing with each crisis as it arises, in the light of 
great ideals. 

Matthew Arnold, in a mood of academic 
despondency, wrote of an age of transition : 

"Achilles ponders in his tent, 
The kings of modern thought are dumb. 
Silent they stand, but not content, 
And wait to see the Future come." 
277 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

There may be some ex-kings of thought who 
to-day assume this attitude of skeptical de- 
tachment. They are the lost leaders, and the 
great army of liberated humanity sweeps by 
them. Achilles in his tent was not pondering 
over the greater issues of the war; he was sulking 
over a private grievance. He was no more ad- 
mirable than when dragging the dead body of 
his adversary around the walls of Troy. The 
fact was that, in spite of the fable of his admirers, 
the weak point of Achilles was not in his heel but 
in his head. 

The people who are doing the constructive 
thinking have not, during the war, been ponder- 
ing in their tents, nor are they now thirsting for 
revenge. They have been too busy. They are 
not waiting to see the Future come. A new era 
has already been begun, and they know it. 

In reading this essay two years after it was 
written I am conscious of a change of mood. 
A great opportunity to do something which had 
never been done before came to the American 
people, and through divided counsels has been 
lost. There has been an obvious reaction from 
278 



ON THE EVENING OF THE NEW DAY 

the mood of idealism. One feels like saying, as 
Paul did to the Galatians, when after accepting 
a new religion they fell back into the old at- 
titude: "How turn ye again to the weak and 
beggarly elements whereunto ye desire again to 
be in bondage. . . . Ye did run well, who did 
hinder you." 

Just now we are conscious of the hindrances. 
But this does not obscure the fact that the 
American people did run well, nor does it pre- 
vent us from believing that they will again take 
up their international responsibilities bravely 
and cheerfully. 

It is a new day though the dawn has not yet 
come. 



THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 










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